Moff 1 CHR Chapter 21

◄ 1 CHR 21 ► ║ ═ ©

21 Satan now made a move against Israel; he incited David to number Israel. 2 So David told Joab and the commanders of the nation to go and number Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring him word, that he might know the total. 3 Joab said to the king, "May the Eternal make his people a hundred times as large as it is to-day! But is not my lord their king? Are they not all my lord's servants? Why should my lord the king insist on this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?" 4 Nevertheless the king's orders overbore Joab. So Joab retired; he went all over Israel and then came back to Jerusalem. 5 Joab reported to David the total number of the people who had been registered; all in Israel amounted to one million one hundred thousand men-at-arms, while Judah numbered four hundred and seventy thousand men-at-arms. 6 (Joab had not counted Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king's order was detestable to him.)

7 Now God was displeased at this action; so he struck Israel. 8 Then said David to God, "I have sinned greatly in doing this; pray take away the sin ofthy servant, for I have done a senseless deed!" 9 The Eternal said to Gad, David's seer, 10 "Go and tell David that this is what the Eternal says: 'I put three things before you; choose one of them to befall you.'" 11 So Gad went and told David that the Eternal said, "Take what you please: 12 three years of famine, three months of defeat at the hand of your foes, while they chase you and cut you down, or three days of the Eternal's own sword, pestilence in the land and the angel of the Eternal dealing death all over Israel. Consider," said Gad, "what answer I am to take to him who sent me." 13 "I am in a terrible difficulty," said David to Gad; "however, let me fall into the hands of the Eternal (for his mercies are many), not into the hands of men."

14 So the Eternal sent a pestilence upon Israel, and Israel lost seventy thousand men. 15 God even sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem; but, as he was on the point of destroying it, the Eternal looked and changed his mind about the punishment; he said to the destroying angel, "Enough! hold your hand!" The angel of the Eternal was standing beside the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite, 16 and when David raised his eyes, he saw the angel of the Eternal in mid-air, holding a drawn sword over Jerusalem. Then David and the sheikhs, clothed in sackcloth, dropped on their faces, 17 and David said to God, "Was it not I who ordered the people to be numbered? It was I who sinned, I who acted so wickedly! But these poor creatures, what have they done? Let thine hand, O Eternal my God, be against me and against

my fathers house, not against my people, to plague them." 18 Then the angel of the Eternal ordered Gad to tell David to go up and erect an altar to the Eternal at the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite. 19 At the bidding of Gad, who spoke in the name of the Eternal, David did go up. 20 When Oman turned round, he saw the angel; and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Oman was threshing wheat; 21 and, as David approached him, Oman looked out, and when he saw David he went outside the threshing-floor and bowed to the king with his face to the ground. 22 Then said David to Oman, "Let me have the site of this threshing-floor in order to build an altar to the Eternal, that the plague may be averted from the people. You must take the full price for it." 23 "Take it as your own," said Oman; "let my lord the king do whatever he pleases. Here I give you the oxen for burnt-offerings; and the threshing-sledges for wood, and the wheat for the cereal-offering: I give you them all." 24 "No, indeed," said king David to Oman; "I will buy it for its full price; I will not take what belongs to you for the Eternal, nor offer a burnt-offering that has cost me nothing.” 25 So David gave Ornan a thousand golden guineas for the site; 26 and there David built an altar for the Eternal, and offered burnt-offerings and recompense-offerings, worshipping the Eternal, who answered him from heaven with fire upon the altar of burnt-offering. 27 Then at the bidding of the Eternal, the angel sheathed his sword again.

28 Then it was, as David saw that the Eternal had answered his sacrifice at the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite 29 (for although the tent of the Eternal, made by Moses in the desert, and the altar of burnt-offering were then on the height at Gibeon, 30 David could not approach them to consult God there, he was so terrified of the sword of the angel of the Eternal),

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Moff 1 CHR Chapter 21

Moff 1 CHR Chapter 21