d David lifting up his eyes, saw the angel of the Lord standing
between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand, turned against
Jerusalem: and both he and the ancients clothed in haircloth, fell down
flat on the ground.

21:17. And David said to God: Am not I he that commanded the people to
be numbered? It is I that have sinned: it is I that have done the evil:
but as for this flock, what hath it deserved? O Lord my God, let thy
hand be turned, I beseech thee, upon me, and upon my father's house: and
let not thy people be destroyed.

21:18. And the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to tell David, to go up,
and build an altar to the Lord God in the thrashingfloor of Ornan the
Jebusite.

21:19. And David went up, according to the word of Gad, which he spoke
to him in the name of the Lord.

21:20. Now when Ornan looked up, and saw the angel, he and his four sons
hid themselves: for at that time he was thrashing wheat in the floor.

21:21. And as David was coming to Ornan, Ornan saw him, and went out of
the thrashingfloor to meet him, and bowed down to him with his face to
the ground.

21:22. And David said to him: Give me this place of thy thrashingfloor,
that I may build therein an altar to the Lord: but thou shalt take of me
as much money as it is worth, that the plague may cease from the people.

21:23. And Ornan said to David: Take it, and let my lord the king do all
that pleaseth him: and moreover the oxen also I give for a holocaust,
and the drays for wood, and the wheat for the sacrifice: I will give it
all willingly.

21:24. And king David said to him: It shall not be so, but I will give
thee money as much as it is worth: for I must not take it from thee, and
so offer to the Lord holocausts free cost.

21:25. So David gave to Ornan for the place, six hundred sicles of gold
of just weight.

Six hundred sicles, etc... This was the price of the whole place, on
which the temple was afterwards built; but the price of the oxen was
fifty sicles of silver. 2 Kings 24.24.

21:26. And he built there an altar to the Lord: and he offered
holocausts, and peace offerings, and he called upon the Lord, and he
heard him by sending fire from heaven upon the altar of the holocaust.

21:27. And the Lord commanded the angel: and he put up his sword again
into the sheath.

21:28. And David seeing that the Lord had heard him in the
thrashingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite, forthwith offered victims there.

21:29. But