13. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of the LORD; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man.
14. So the LORD sent a plague upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
15. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he relented of the disaster, and said to the angel that destroyed,
16. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.
17. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? let your hand, I pray you, O LORD my God, be on me, and on my father's house; but not on your people, that they should be plagued.
18. Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.
19. And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the name of the LORD.
20. And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.
21. And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshingfloor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground.