¹¹ And when David rose up in the morning, the word of Jehovah came unto the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, ¹² Go and speak unto David, Thus saith Jehovah, I ^[a]offer thee three things: choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee. ¹³ So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thy foes while they pursue thee? or shall there be three days’ pestilence in thy land? now advise thee, and consider what answer I shall return to him that sent me. ¹⁴ And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of Jehovah; for his mercies are ^[b]great; and let me not fall into the hand of man.

¹⁵ So Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed; and there died of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men. ¹⁶ And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, Jehovah repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough; now stay thy hand. And the angel of Jehovah was by the threshing-floor of ^[c]Araunah the Jebusite. ¹⁷ And David spake unto Jehovah when he saw the angel that smote the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? let thy hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father’s house.