And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man.
David said ... I am in a great strait. Well might he say so; because the chastisement was bitter in the extreme. Seven years of famine, three years of war, or three days of pestilence were the fearful alternatives set before him. They were all directly and eminently calculated to humble his pride and to diminish that confidence in human power and resources which had been the origin and mainspring of his sinful policy.
Let us fall now into the hands of the Lord. An overwhelming sense of his sin led him to acquiesce in the punishment denounced, notwithstanding its apparent excess of severity. He proceeded on a good principle in choosing the pestilence. In pestilence he was equally exposed, as it was just and right he should be, to danger as his people, whereas in war and famine he possessed means of protection far superior to them. Besides, he thereby showed his trust, founded on long experience, in the divine goodness.