1st Chronicles 21:13 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man. 14 So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.
[Patriarchs & Prophets pp 748>749] The king pleaded with God in behalf of Israel: “Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done? let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O Lord my God, be on me, and on my father's house; but not on Thy people, that they should be plagued.” The taking of the census had caused disaffection among the people; yet they had themselves cherished the same sins that prompted David's action.
As the Lord through Absalom's sin visited judgment upon David, so through David's error he punished the sins of Israel. The destroying angel had stayed his course outside Jerusalem. He stood upon Mount Moriah, “in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” Directed by the prophet, David went to the mountain, and there built an altar to the Lord, “and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord; and He answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.” “So the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.”
The spot upon which the altar was erected, henceforth ever to be regarded as holy ground, was tendered to the king by Ornan as a gift. But the king declined thus to receive it. “I will verily buy it for the full price,” he said; “for I will not take that which is thine for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels ofgold by weight.” This spot, memorable as the place where Abraham had built the altar to offer up his son, and now hallowed by this great deliverance, was afterward chosen as the site of the temple erected by Solomon.
1st Chronicles 21:26 And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. 27 And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
May The Lord add His blessing to the study of His word. God bless!