11When David got up the next morning, the LORD’s message had already come to the prophet Gad, David’s seer:
12“Go, tell David,‘This is what the LORD has said: I am offering you three forms of judgment. Pick one of them and I will carry it out against you.’”
13Gad went to David and told him,“Shall seven years of famine come upon your land? Or shall you flee for three months from your enemy with him in hot pursuit? Or shall there be three days of plague in your land? Now decide what I should tell the one who sent me.”
14David said to Gad,“I am very upset! I prefer that we be attacked by the LORD, for his mercy is great; I do not want to be attacked by men!”
15So the LORD sent a plague through Israel from the morning until the completion of the appointed time. Seventy thousand men died from Dan to Beer Sheba.
16When the angel extended his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the LORD relented from his judgment. He told the angel who was killing the people,“That’s enough! Stop now!”(Now the LORD’s angel was near the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.)
17When he saw the angel who was destroying the people, David said to the LORD,“Look, it is I who have sinned and done this evil thing! As for these sheep– what have they done? Attack me and my family.”
18David Acquires a Threshing Floor and Constructs an Altar There So Gad went to David that day and told him,“Go up and build an altar for the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”