10. David’s heart struck him after he had counted the people. David said to Yahweh, “I have sinned greatly in that which I have done. But now, Yahweh, put away, I beg you, the iniquity of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.”
11. When David rose up in the morning, Yahweh’s word came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,
12. “Go and speak to David, ‘Yahweh says, “I offer you three things. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.”’”
13. So Gad came to David, and told him, and said to him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now answer, and consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”
14. David said to Gad, “I am in distress. Let us fall now into Yahweh’s hand; for his mercies are great. Let me not fall into man’s hand.”
15. So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning even to the appointed time; and seventy thousand men died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba.
16. When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, Yahweh relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand.” Yahweh’s angel was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17. David spoke to Yahweh when he saw the angel who struck the people, and said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me, and against my father’s house.”
18. Gad came that day to David, and said to him, “Go up, build an altar to Yahweh on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”
19. David went up according to the saying of Gad, as Yahweh commanded.
20. Araunah looked out, and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. Then Araunah went out, and bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground.
21. Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy your threshing floor, to build an altar to Yahweh, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.”
22. Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Behold, the cattle for the burnt offering, and the threshing instruments and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.