David's Dread Choice After the Census in Midrash Shmuel

"And David said to Gad: I am in great distress, etc." (II Samuel 24:14). R. Shimon ben Yochai taught: To what was David comparable at that hour? To a sick man who has declined toward death. They said to him, "Where do you wish that we lay you down — beside your father or beside your mother?" [He says to them,] "Woe to the ears that hear such a thing!" So too, "And David said to Gad: I am in great distress."