1 Chronicles 21:10
Go and tell David, saying, Thus saith the LORD, I offer thee three things: choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee. Go and tell David, saying, Thus saith the LORD, I offer thee three things: choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.
After David sinned by numbering Israel, God sent His prophet Gad to offer him a choice of three punishments and to require him to choose one of them to be done to him. The three choices set before him were famine, defeat by his enemies, and pestilence. The decision placed David in a great strait, and he chose to fall into the hand of the Lord rather than into the hands of men. He made that choice because he trusted that God's mercies are great, while men are cruel.
The verse belongs to the account of judgment upon David and Israel in which David's sacrifice of burnt offerings and peace offerings on Ornan's threshing floor stayed the destroying angel's sword and turned it aside. God answered David at that site by fire from heaven, and that same site was later chosen for the temple. That turning aside of the sword is a symbol of the Saviour's sacrifice and mediation for guilty people.