11. So Gad came to David, and said to him, “the Lord says, ‘Take your choice:
12. either three years of famine; or three months to be consumed before your foes, while the sword of your enemies overtakes you; or else three days the sword of the Lord, even pestilence in the land, and the Lord’s angel destroying throughout all the borders of Israel. Now therefore consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.’”
13. David said to Gad, “I am in distress. Let me fall, I pray, into the Lord’s hand; for his mercies are very great. Don’t let me fall into man’s hand.”
14. So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.
15. God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. As he was about to destroy, the Lord saw, and he relented of the disaster, and said to the destroying angel, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand.” the Lord’s angel was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
16. David lifted up his eyes, and saw the Lord’s angel standing between earth and the sky, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.
17. David said to God, “Isn’t it I who commanded the people to be counted? It is even I who have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand, O Lord my God, be against me, and against my father’s house; but not against your people, that they should be plagued.”
18. Then the Lord’s angel commanded Gad to tell David that David should go up and raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
19. David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the Lord’s name.
20. Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.