Angels-PESTILENCE ANGEL

The Pestilence Angel is referred to in the First Book of Chronicles,
chapter 21 as the angel who delivered the pestilence upon Israel as
punishment to King David for having conducted a census of Israel and
Judah. According to tradition, it was Satan who incited David to
count the people, and David ordered this be done against the urgings
of his military commander Joab. God proceeded to punish Israel.
David then admitted that he wrongly acted and prayed that God
remove his guilt. God sent word to David that he could take his
choice of three years of famine, three months of military losses, or
three days of the Lord’s own sword, bringing pestilence throughout the
country. David decided that it would be better to suffer at the hands of
the merciful God than at the hands of man. So the Lord sent a pestilence
throughout Israel, killing 70,000 of David’s people:
And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but, as he
was destroying it, the Lord saw and repented of the evil, and
said to the destroying angel at the moment when he was
standing beside the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite,
“Enough! Stay your hand.” When David looked up and saw
the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven,
with his sword drawn in his hand and stretched out over
Jerusalem, he and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell prostrate
to the ground; and David said to God, “It was I who gave
the order to count the people. It was I who sinned, I, the shepherd,
who did wrong. But these poor sheep, what have they
done? O Lord my God, let thy hand fall upon me and upon my
family, but check this plague on the people.” The angel of the
Lord, speaking through the lips of Gad, commanded David to
go to the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite and to set up
there an altar to the Lord. David went up as Gad had bidden
him in the Lord’s name. Ornan’s four sons who were with him
hid themselves, but he was busy threshing his wheat when he
turned and saw the angel. (1 Chron. 21:15–20)
Ornan offered to give his threshing floor to King David, but the
King insisted on paying Ornan full price for it, so that the offering to
the Lord should come directly from him. David built an altar on the
threshing floor and made his offering to the Lord. “Then, at the Lord’s
command, the angel sheathed his sword” (1 Chron. 21:27).