10And David was conscience-stricken that he had numbered the people. And David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done; and now, I beg You, O LORD, take away the sin of Your servant; for I have done very foolishly”. 11And when David arose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, 12“Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the LORD, I offer you three choices; choose one of them, that I may do it to you’” 13So Gad came to David, and told him, and asked him, ‘Shall seven years of famine come upon you in your land? Or will you flee from before your enemies, while they pursue you for three months? Or would you prefer that there be three days' pestilence or plague in your land?’ Now consider, and tell me what answer I shall return to Him Who sent me.” 14And David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress; let us fall, now, into the hand of the LORD; for His mercies are great. And let me not fall into the hand of man.” 15So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning to the time appointed; and seventy thousand men died, from Dan to Beersheba. 16And when the Angel stretched out His hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD repented of the evil, and said to the Angel That destroyed the people, “It is enough; withdraw now Your hand. And the Angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. 17And David spoke to the LORD when he saw the Angel Who struck the people, and said, “Look, I have sinned, and have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let Your hand rather be against me, and against my father's house.”

18And Gad came that day to David, and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite”. 19And so David went up, according to the word of Gad, as the LORD commanded. 20And Araunah saw the king and his servants coming toward him; and he went out, and bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground. 21And Araunah said, “Why has my lord, the king, come to his servant?” And David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague upon the people may be stopped”. 22And Araunah said to David, “Let my lord, the king, take and offer up what seems good to him; look, here are oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments and other yokes for the oxen for firewood”. 23 And Araunah said to the king, “All these things I will did give to the king. May the LORD your God accept you”. 24And the king said to Araunah, “No; I insist that I will buy it from you at the current price; nor will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of things that have cost me nothing”. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 25And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD was moved by prayer for the land, and the plague upon Israel was stopped.