📖WEB · 1 Chronicles 21:16
What does 1 Chronicles 21:16 mean?
"David lifted up his eyes, and saw Yahweh’s angel standing between earth and the sky, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces."
— 1 Chronicles 21:16 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
David said to Gad, “I am in distress. Let me fall, I pray, into Yahweh’s hand; for his mercies are very great. Don’t let me fall into man’s hand.”
So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.
God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. As he was about to destroy, Yahweh saw, and he relented of the disaster, and said to the destroying angel, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand.” Yahweh’s angel was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
David lifted up his eyes, and saw Yahweh’s angel standing between earth and the sky, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.
David said to God, “Isn’t it I who commanded the people to be counted? It is even I who have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand, O Yahweh my God, be against me, and against my father’s house; but not against your people, that they should be plagued.”
Then Yahweh’s angel commanded Gad to tell David that David should go up and raise an altar to Yahweh on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in Yahweh’s name.
Explanation
This verse describes a dramatic and terrifying moment near the end of a story that begins with sin and ends with mercy. David has just taken a census of Israel's fighting men, an act motivated by pride and a desire to measure his own military strength rather than trust in God. As judgment for this sin, God sends a plague that kills seventy thousand people across Israel. Just as the destroying angel reaches Jerusalem, God relents and commands it to stop. In this verse, David actually sees the angel with his own eyes — a fearsome, otherworldly figure suspended between heaven and earth, sword drawn and pointed directly at the city. The sight is so overwhelming that David and the elders of Israel, already dressed in sackcloth as a sign of mourning and repentance, fall face-down on the ground in terror and grief.
The book of 1 Chronicles was written after the Babylonian exile
Compare translations
Go deeper with ScriptureCompanion AI
Ask questions about any verse, follow reading plans, write personal prayers, and track your daily habit — all grounded in verified scripture text.