12either three years of famine; or three months to be consumed before your foes, while the sword of your enemies overtakes you; or else three days the sword of Yahweh, even pestilence in the land, and the angel of Yahweh destroying throughout all the borders of Israel. Now therefore consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.
13David said to Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall, I pray, into the hand of Yahweh; for very great are his mercies: and let me not fall into the hand of man.
14So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
15God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was about to destroy, Yahweh saw, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough; now stay your hand. The angel of Yahweh was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
16David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Yahweh standing between earth and the sky, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.
17David said to God, Isn`t it I who commanded the people to be numbered? It is even I who have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand, O Yahweh my God, be against me, and against my father`s house; but not against your people, that they should be plagued.
18Then the angel of Yahweh commanded Gad to tell David, that David should go up, and raise an altar to Yahweh in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
