1 Chronicles 21:15-30

NHEB(i) 15 God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. As he was about to destroy, the LORD saw, and he relented of the disaster, and said to the destroying angel, "It is enough; now stay your hand." The angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 16 David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD 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. 17 David 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 LORD my God, be against me, and against my father's house; but not against your people, that they should be plagued." 18 Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to tell David that David should go up, and raise an altar to the LORD in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19 David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the name of the LORD. 20 Ornan turned back, and saw the king, and his four sons who were with him hiding themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. 21 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 the LORD. You shall sell it to me for the full price, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people." 23 Ornan said to David, "Take it for yourself, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes. Look, I give the oxen for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meal offering. I give it all." 24 King David said to Ornan, "No; but I will most certainly buy it for the full price. For I will not take that which is yours for the LORD, nor offer a burnt offering without cost." 25 So David gave to Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the place. 26 David built an altar to the LORD there, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called on the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by fire on the altar of burnt offering, and it consumed the burnt offering. 27 The LORD commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into its sheath. 28 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. 29 For the tabernacle of the 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 couldn't go before it to inquire of God; for he was afraid because of the sword of the angel of the LORD.