Then the king said to Amasa, Call the men of Judah together to me within three days, and be thou here present.

So Amasa went to call [the men of] Judah together, but he delayed longer than the set time which he had appointed him.

And David said to Abishai, Now will Sheba the son of Bichri do us more harm than did Absalom. Take thou thy lord's servants, and pursue after him, lest he get him fortified cities, and escape out of our sight.

And Joab said to Amasa, Is it well with thee, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him.

And there stood by him one of Joab's young men, and said, He who favors Joab, and he who is for David, let him follow Joab.

And he came near to her, and the woman said, Are thou Joab? And he answered, I am. Then she said to him, Hear the words of thy handmaid. And he answered, I do hear.

And Joab answered and said, Far be it, far be it from me that I should swallow up or destroy.

The matter is not so, but a man of the hill-country of Ephraim, Sheba the son of Bichri by name, has lifted up his hand against the king, even against David. Deliver him only, and I will depart from the city. And the woman said to

And there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David sought the face of LORD. And LORD said, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put to death the Gibeonites.

and David said to the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement that ye may bless the inheritance of LORD?

And the Gibeonites said to him, It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house, neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that I will do for you.

And they said to the king, The man who consumed us, and who devised against us, [that] we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the borders of Israel,

let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to LORD in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of LORD. And the king said, I will give them.

And he said, LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, even mine.

He gives great deliverance to his king, and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and to his seed, for evermore.

Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse says, and the man who was raised on high says, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel:

The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spoke to me. He who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God,

And David longed, and said, Oh that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!

And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this, [to drink] the blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives? Therefore he would not drink it. These things the three mighty men did.

He was more honorable than the thirty, but he did not attain to the [first] three. And David set him over his guard.

And the king said to Joab the captain of the army, who was with him, Go now to and fro through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, and number ye the people, that I may know the sum of the people.

And Joab said to the king, Now LORD thy God add to the people, however many they may be, a hundredfold, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?

And they passed over the Jordan, and encamped in Aroer on the right side of the city that is in the middle of the valley of Gad, and to Jazer.

And David's heart smote him after he had numbered the people. And David said to LORD, I have sinned greatly in that which I have done, but now, O LORD, put away, I beseech thee, the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foo

So Gad came to David, and told him, and said to him, Shall seven years of famine come to thee in thy land? Or will thou flee three months before thy foes while they pursue thee? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in thy land?

And David said to Gad, I am in a great strait. Let us fall now into the hand of LORD, for his mercies are great, and let me not fall into the hand of man.

And when the [heavenly] agent stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, LORD relented of the evil, and said to the agent who destroyed the people, It is enough. Now stay thy hand. And the agent of LORD was by the thres

And David spoke to LORD when he saw the agent who smote the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely, but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's ho

And Gad came that day to David, and said to him, Go up, rear an altar to LORD in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

And Araunah said, Why has my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, To buy the threshing-floor from thee, to build an altar to LORD that the plague may be halted from the people.

And Araunah said to David, Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Behold, the oxen for the burnt-offering, and the threshing instruments and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.

All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king. And Araunah said to the king, LORD thy God accept thee.

And the king said to Araunah, No, but I will truly buy it from thee at a price. Neither will I offer burnt-offerings to LORD my God which cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver