The Census and the Plague

Now King David wanted to know how many tens of thousands of people there were, but he forgot the commands of Moses, who had told them beforehand that if the people were numbered, they should pay half a shekel to God for every head. So the king ordered Joab, the commander of his army, to go and number the whole people. When Joab said there was no need for such a count, the king would not be persuaded, but ordered him to make no delay and to go about numbering the Hebrews at once. So Joab took with him the heads of the tribes and the scribes, went through the country of the Israelites and took note of how numerous the people were, and returned to the king at Jerusalem after nine months and twenty days. He gave the king the number of the people, apart from the tribe of Benjamin, for he had not yet numbered that tribe, any more than the tribe of Levi, because the king repented of having sinned against God. The number of the rest of the Israelites was nine hundred thousand men able to bear arms and go to war; and the tribe of Judah by itself was four hundred thousand men. [a]

When the prophets had made known to David that God was angry with him, he began to plead with him and ask him to be merciful to him and forgive his sin. But God sent Gad the prophet to him to offer him a choice of three things, so that he could choose which he preferred: whether he would have famine come on the country for seven years, or have war and be subdued by his enemies for three months, or have God send a pestilence and disease on the Hebrews for three days. Since he had been brought to an impossible choice among great miseries, he was troubled and sorely bewildered. When the prophet said he must of necessity make his choice, and ordered him to answer quickly so that he could tell God what he had chosen, the king reasoned with himself. If he asked for famine, he would seem to be doing it for others and without danger to himself, since he had a great deal of grain stored up, but to the harm of others. If he chose to be overcome by his enemies for three months, he would seem to have chosen war because he had brave men around him and strongholds, and so had nothing to fear from it. So he chose the affliction that is common to kings and their subjects alike, in which the fear was equal on every side; and he said this beforehand, that it was much better to fall into the hands of God than into those of his enemies. [c]

When the prophet heard this, he reported it to God, who then sent a pestilence and a great mortality on the Hebrews. They did not all die in the same way, nor was it easy to tell what the disease was. The miserable sickness was indeed one, but it carried them off by ten thousand causes and occasions that those who were stricken could not understand. One died hard on the heels of another; the terrible sickness seized them before they knew it and brought them suddenly to their end. Some breathed their last at once, with very great pain and bitter grief; some wasted away with their sicknesses and had nothing left to be buried, but as soon as they fell were utterly consumed; some were choked, and greatly lamented their condition, being also struck with a sudden darkness; some, while they were burying a relative, fell down dead without finishing the funeral rites. Seventy thousand died of this disease, which began in the morning and lasted until the hour of the midday meal. And the angel stretched out his hand over Jerusalem, as if to send this terrible judgment on it. But David had put on sackcloth and lay on the ground, pleading with God and begging that the plague might now cease and that he would be satisfied with those who had already perished. When the king looked up into the air and saw the angel being carried through it toward Jerusalem with his sword drawn, he said to God that he, their shepherd, might justly be punished, but that the sheep ought to be spared, since they had not sinned at all; and he begged God to send his wrath on him and on all his family, but to spare the people. [d]

When God heard his prayer, he made the pestilence cease, and sent Gad the prophet to him, and ordered him to go up at once to the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, build an altar to God there and offer sacrifices. When David heard that, he did not neglect his duty, but hurried to the place appointed him. Ornan was threshing wheat; and when he saw the king and all his servants coming toward him, he ran ahead, came to him and bowed down before him. He was a Jebusite by descent, but a particular friend of David’s, and that was why David did him no harm when he overthrew the city, as we told the reader a little before. Ornan asked, “Why has my lord come to his servant?” David answered that he had come to buy the threshing floor from him, so that he could build an altar to God on it and offer a sacrifice. Ornan replied that he freely gave him the threshing floor and the plows and the oxen for a burnt offering, and he prayed God to accept his sacrifice graciously. But the king answered that he welcomed his generosity and greatness of spirit and accepted his goodwill, but he asked him to take the price of them all, for it was not right to offer a sacrifice that cost nothing. When Ornan said he would do as he pleased, David bought the threshing floor from him for fifty shekels. When he had built an altar, he performed the divine service, brought a burnt offering, and offered peace offerings too. With these God was appeased and became gracious to them again. [e]

Now it happened that this was the very place to which Abraham had brought his son Isaac to offer him as a burnt offering; and when the youth was about to have his throat cut, a ram suddenly appeared standing by the altar, which Abraham sacrificed in place of his son, as we have related before. When King David saw that God had heard his prayer and graciously accepted his sacrifice, he resolved to call that whole place the Altar of All the People, and to build a temple to God there. These words he spoke very fittingly to what was to happen afterward; for God sent the prophet to him and told him that there his son, the son who was to take the kingdom after him, would build him a temple.