either three years of famine; or three months of devastation by your foes, while the sword of your enemies overtakes you; or else three days of the sword of the Lord, pestilence upon the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.’ Now decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”

And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but when he was about to destroy it, the Lord saw, and he repented of the evil; and he said to the destroying angel, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jeb′usite.

And David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.

David’s Altar and Sacrifice

Then the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and rear an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jeb′usite.

Now Ornan was threshing wheat; he turned and saw the angel, and his four sons who were with him hid themselves.

Then the Lord commanded the angel; and he put his sword back into its sheath.

but David could not go before it to inquire of God, for he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the Lord.