11. And when David rose up in the morning, the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying,
12. Go and speak unto David, Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things; choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.
13. So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thy foes while they pursue thee? or shall there be three days pestilence in thy land? now advise thee, and consider what answer I shall return to him that sent me.
14. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: 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.
15. So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men.
16. And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough; now stay thine hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17. And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely: but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house.
18. And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the Lord in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
19. And David went up according to the saying of Gad, as the Lord commanded.
20. And Araunah looked forth, and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him: and Araunah went out, and bowed himself before the king with his face to the ground.
21. And Araunah said, Wherefore is my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, To buy the threshing-floor of thee, to build an altar unto the Lord, that the plague may be stayed from the people.
22. And Araunah said unto David, Let my lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him: behold, the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing instruments and the furniture of the oxen for the wood:
23. all this, O king, doth Araunah give unto the king. And Araunah said unto the king, The Lord thy God accept thee.