The Hebrew kingdom had now attained its farthest limits, even those which God had revealed many centuries before in vision to Abraham (Gen. xv. 18). Not only had David given a capital to his people, but he had conquered all the nations on the immediate frontier of his realm. His kingdom had become like one of the kingdoms of the world[311]. It had its court, its palace, its splendour, its tributaries. In this hour of his prosperity the monarch was tempted (1 Chr. xxi. 1) to yield to pride and self-exaltation, and gave directions to Joab to carry out a general census of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba. His object, it has been supposed, was either the levying of a poll-tax or the formation of a standing army with a view to foreign conquests[312]. Whatever was his precise motive, it excited the repugnance of the captains of the host, and even of Joab himself, who not only warned the king against being _the cause of a trespass in Israel_, but regarded the royal proposition as actually _abominable_ (1 Chr. xxi. 6). When, however, he found that nothing would turn the king from his fixed purpose, he set out, and after the lapse of 9 months and 20 days reported 800,000 in Israel as fit for military service, and 500,000 in Judah. But before he had numbered Benjamin or Levi (2 Sam. xxiv. 10) David’s heart smote him, and Gad, the seer, was commissioned to offer him the choice of 7 years’ famine, or 3 months’ defeat before his enemies, or a 3 days’ pestilence. David chose _to fall into the hands of God rather than into the hands of man_. Thereupon the plague began, and during three days swept off upwards of 70,000. But when the hand of the destroying angel was uplifted over Jerusalem, the Lord, _whose mercies are great_ (2 Sam. xxiv. 14), repented of the evil, and on the intercession of the king the angel desisted, when he was by the threshing-floor of Ornan or Araunah, a wealthy Jebusite. By the advice of Gad David now bought the site of the threshing-floor and a yoke of oxen, erected there an altar, and offered thereon burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Fire descended in testimony of the acceptance of the sacrifice, and with the cessation of the plague consecrated the rocky site of the future altar of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah (2 Chr. iii. 1).