Immerse: Kingdoms Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 188
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IMMERSE
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KINGDOMS
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famine throughout your land, three months of fleeing from your enemies,
or three days of severe plague throughout your land? Think this over and
decide what answer I should give the Lord who sent me.”
“I’m in a desperate situation!” David replied to Gad. “But let us fall into
the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great. Do not let me fall into human
hands.”
So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel that morning, and it lasted for
three days. A total of 70,000 people died throughout the nation, from Dan
in the north to Beersheba in the south. But as the angel was preparing to
destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented and said to the death angel, “Stop!
That is enough!” At that moment the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebus ite.
When David saw the angel, he said to the Lord, “I am the one who has
sinned and done wrong! But these people are as innocent as s heep—what
have they done? Let your anger fall against me and my family.”
That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar
to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebus ite.”
So David went up to do what the Lord had commanded him. When
Araunah saw the king and his men coming toward him, he came and
bowed before the king with his face to the ground. “Why have you come,
my lord the king?” Araunah asked.
David replied, “I have come to buy your threshing floor and to build an
altar to the Lord there, so that he will stop the plague.”
“Take it, my lord the king, and use it as you wish,” Araunah said to Da
vid. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing
boards and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. I will give it all
to you, Your Majesty, and may the Lord your God accept your sacrifice.”
But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not
present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing.”
So Dav id paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the
oxen.
David built an altar there to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and
peace offerings. And the Lord answered his prayer for the land, and the
plague on Israel was stopped.
King David was now very old, and no matter how many blankets covered
him, he could not keep warm. So his advisers told him, “Let us find a young
virgin to wait on you and look after you, my lord. She will lie in your arms
and keep you warm.”
So they searched throughout the land of Israel for a beautiful girl, and
they found Abishag from Shunem and brought her to the king. The girl