2 Samuel 24:16–24

¹⁶But 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.”^*

David’s Altar on the Threshing Floor

¹⁸That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go up and erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”^{* 19}Following Gad’s instructions, David went up, as the Lord had commanded. ²⁰When Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming toward him, and Araunah went out and prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground. ²¹Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord, so that the plague may be averted from the people.”^{* 22}Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him; here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.^{* 23}All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God respond favorably to you.”^*

²⁴But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.^*