Jonah 1:11

⁶How shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams? With tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my disobedience? The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

²The Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, “What shall we do with the LORD’s ark? Show us how we should send it to its place.”

³They said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, don’t send it empty; but by all means return a trespass offering to him. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.”

¹There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David sought the face of the LORD. The LORD said, “It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

²The king called the Gibeonites and said to them (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the children of Israel had sworn to them; and Saul sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah); ³and David said to the Gibeonites, “What should I do for you? And with what should I make atonement, that you may bless the LORD’s inheritance?”

⁴The 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.” He said, “I will do for you whatever you say.”

⁵They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and who plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the borders of Israel, ⁶let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” The king said, “I will give them.”

¹¹When David rose up in the morning, the LORD’s word came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, ¹²“Go and speak to David, ‘The LORD says, “I offer you three things. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.”’”

¹³So Gad came to David, and told him, saying, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now answer, and consider what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”