1 Chronicles 21:15–28

¹⁵And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; and as he was destroying, Jehovah beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough; withdraw now thine hand. And the angel of Jehovah stood by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. ¹⁶And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah stand between the earth and the heavens, and his sword drawn in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem. And David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces. ¹⁷And David said to God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? It is I that have sinned and done evil; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, Jehovah my God, be on me and on my father’s house; but not on thy people, that they should be smitten.

¹⁸And the angel of Jehovah commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up and rear an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. ¹⁹And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he had spoken in the name of Jehovah. ²⁰And Ornan turned back and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. ²¹And David came to Ornan, and Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing-floor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. ²²And David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of the threshing-floor, that I may build an altar in it to Jehovah: grant it to me for the full money, that the plague may be stayed from the people. ²³And Ornan said to David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his sight: see, I give the oxen for the burnt-offering, and the threshing-sledges for wood, and the wheat for the oblation; I give it all. ²⁴And king David said to Ornan, No; but I will in any case buy them for the full money; for I will not take that which is thine for Jehovah, to offer up a burnt-offering without cost. ²⁵And David gave to Ornan for the place in shekels of gold the weight of six hundred shekels. ²⁶And David built there an altar to Jehovah, and offered up burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, and called upon Jehovah; and he answered him from the heavens by fire upon the altar of burnt-offering. ²⁷And Jehovah spoke to the angel; and he put up his sword again into its sheath. ²⁸At that time when David saw that Jehovah had answered him in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there.