ACV(i)
15 And God sent an agent to Jerusalem to destroy it. And as he was about to destroy, LORD beheld, and he relented of the evil, and said to the destroying agent, It is enough. Now halt thy hand. And the agent of LORD was standing by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
16 And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the agent of LORD standing between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.
17 And David said to God, Is it not I who commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is who have sinned and done very badly. But these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, O LORD my God, be against me, and against my father's house, but not against thy people, that they should be plagued.
18 Then the agent of LORD commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up, and rear an altar to LORD in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
19 And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the name of LORD.
20 And Ornan turned back, and saw the agent, and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat.
21 And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing-floor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground.
22 Then David said to Ornan, Give me the place of this threshing-floor, that I may build thereon an altar to LORD. For the full price thou shall give it me, that the plague may be stopped from the people.
23 And Ornan said to David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes. Lo, I give thee the oxen for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meal offering. I give it all.
24 And king David said to Ornan, No, but I will truly buy it for the full price. For I will not take that which is thine for LORD, nor offer a burnt offering without cost.
25 So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.
26 And David built there an altar to LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon LORD. And he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.
27 And LORD commanded the agent, and he put up his sword again into the sheath of it.
28 At that time, when David saw that LORD had answered him in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there.
29 For the tabernacle of LORD, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt offering, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon.
30 But David could not go before it to inquire of God, for he was afraid because of the sword of the agent of LORD.