Solomon & The Temple

“When your people Israel are struck down before the enemy, because they have sinned against you; if they turn again to you, and confess your name, and pray and make supplication to you in this house:

then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of your people Israel, and bring them again to the land which you gave to their fathers.

“When the sky is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against you; if they pray toward this place, and confess your name, and turn from their sin, when you afflict them:

then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of your servants, and of your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk; and send rain on your land, which you have given to your people for an inheritance.

“If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence, if there is blight, mildew, locust or caterpillar; if their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities; whatever plague, whatever sickness there is;

whatever prayer and supplication is made by any man, or by all your people Israel, who shall each know the plague of his own heart, and spread out his hands toward this house:

then hear in heaven, your dwelling place, and forgive, and do, and render to every man according to all his ways, whose heart you know; (for you, even you only, know the hearts of all the children of men;)

that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land which you gave to our fathers.

“Moreover concerning the foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, when he shall come out of a far country for your name’s sake

(for they shall hear of your great name, and of your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm); when he shall come and pray toward this house;

hear in heaven, your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you for; that all the peoples of the earth may know your name, to fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by your name.

“If your people go out to battle against their enemy, by whatever way you shall send them, and they pray to the LORD toward the city which you have chosen, and toward the house which I have built for your name;

then hear in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause.

If they sin against you (for there is no man who doesn’t sin), and you are angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near;

yet if they shall repent in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of those who carried them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned, and have done perversely; we have dealt wickedly;’

if they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen, and the house which I have built for your name:

then hear their prayer and their supplication in heaven, your dwelling place, and maintain their cause;

and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions in which they have transgressed against you; and give them compassion before those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them

(for they are your people, and your inheritance, which you brought out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron);

that your eyes may be open to the supplication of your servant, and to the supplication of your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they cry to you.

For you separated them from among all the peoples of the earth, to be your inheritance, as you spoke by Moses your servant, when you brought our fathers out of Egypt, Lord GOD.”

It was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication to the LORD, he arose from before the altar of the LORD, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread out toward heaven.

He stood, and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying,

“Blessed be the LORD, who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. There has not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by Moses his servant.

May the LORD our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. Let him not leave us, nor forsake us;