2 Samuel 24:11–17

¹¹When David rose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,^{* 12}“Go and say to David: Thus says the Lord: Three things I offerⁿ you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.”^{* 13}So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what answer I shall return to the one who sent me.” ¹⁴Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great, but let me not fall into human hands.”^*

¹⁵So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba.^{* 16}But when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented concerning the evil and said to the angel who was bringing destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” The angel of the Lord was standing^o by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.^{p* 17}When David saw the angel who was destroying the people, he said to the Lord, “I alone have sinned, and I, the shepherd, have done evil,^q but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house.”^*