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1 Chronicles - ch 21 v 1 - 20
- Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.
- David said to Joab and to the princes of the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring me word, that I may know the sum of them.
- Joab said, Yahweh make his people a hundred times as many as they are: but, my lord the king, aren't they all my lord's servants? Why does my lord require this thing? Why will he be a cause of guilt to Israel?
- Nevertheless the king's word prevailed against Joab. Therefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem.
- Joab gave up the sum of the numbering of the people to David. All those of Israel were one million one hundred thousand men who drew sword: and in Judah were four hundred seventy thousand men who drew sword.
- But he didn't count Levi and Benjamin among them; for the king's word was abominable to Joab.
- God was displeased with this thing; therefore he struck Israel.
- David said to God, I have sinned greatly, in that I have done this thing: but now, put away, I beg you, the iniquity of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.
- Yahweh spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying,
- Go and speak to David, saying, Thus says Yahweh, I offer you three things: choose one of them, that I may do it to you.
- So Gad came to David, and said to him, Thus says Yahweh, Take your choice:
- 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 Yahweh, even pestilence in the land, and the angel of Yahweh destroying throughout all the borders of Israel. Now therefore consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.
- David said to Gad, I am in distress. Let me fall, I pray, into the hand of Yahweh; for very great are his mercies: and let me not fall into the hand of man.
- So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
- God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was about to destroy, Yahweh saw, and he relented of the disaster, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough; now stay your hand. The angel of Yahweh was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
- David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Yahweh 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.
- David said to God, Isn't it I who commanded the people to be numbered? It is even I who have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand, O Yahweh my God, be against me, and against my father's house; but not against your people, that they should be plagued.
- Then the angel of Yahweh commanded Gad to tell David, that David should go up, and raise an altar to Yahweh in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
- David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the name of Yahweh.
- Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.
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