2 Chronicles 7 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~959 BC, the dedication festival, followed by a night vision some years later
Location
Jerusalem, the temple and the surrounding courts, with worshippers gathered from Lebo-hamath in the far north to the Wadi of Egypt in the south
Audience
Returned exiles in Persian-era Judah looking for terms on which national restoration was possible
Situation
Fire falls from heaven and consumes the offerings, and the people bow with their faces to the ground. A fourteen-day festival follows, and later God appears to Solomon at night, promising that if the people humble themselves, pray, and turn from their wrongdoing, he will hear from heaven and heal their land, but warning that abandoning him will mean the temple's ruin.
Key Background
Fire falling on the altar echoes the same sign at the tent of meeting in Leviticus and at David's altar on this hill, marking the new temple as continuous with everything before it. The festival runs alongside the Festival of Booths, the autumn harvest week when Israelites camped in temporary shelters to remember the wilderness years, so the dedication was folded into the busiest pilgrimage of the calendar. The promise about humbling, praying, and healing the land is the theological hinge of the whole book, offered to readers who were living in the ruined aftermath the warning describes.
When Solomon finished praying, came down from the sky and consumed the and the sacrifices, and the of Yahweh filled the house.
The priests couldn't even enter the of because the heavy, radiant presence of filled Yahweh's
When all the Israelites saw the fire come down and the heavy, radiant presence over the house, they with their to the on the pavement and worshiped. They gave thanks to Yahweh: "He is good — his lasts forever."
Then the king and all the people offered before Yahweh.
King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty-two thousand cattle and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. And so the king and all the people the house of God.
The priests stood at their posts. The played Yahweh's musical instruments — the ones King David had made for giving thanks to Yahweh, because "his committed love lasts forever" — whenever David would offer praise through them. The priests blew opposite them, and all Israel was standing.
Solomon also the of the in front of Yahweh's house to because he offered the burnt and the fat portions of the there. The bronze altar he had made could not hold all the burnt grain and fat portions.
Solomon held the at that time for seven days — and all Israel with him, an enormous assembly — people from as far as to the Wadi of Egypt.
On the eighth day they held a because they had celebrated the dedication of the altar for seven days and the festival for seven days.
On the twenty-third day of the seventh month, he sent the people home. They were and about all the things Yahweh had done for David, for Solomon, and for his people Israel.
Solomon finished building Yahweh's house and the royal palace. Everything Solomon had planned to do in Yahweh's house and his own palace — he it
Then Yahweh to Solomon at night and said to him: "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a of
If I up the so there's no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send a among my people —
and my people, who are by my and pray, and my and from their — then I myself will hear from heaven, and I will their and I will their
Now my will be and my to the prayer offered in this place.
I have now chosen this house and it my own, so that my will be there forever. My eyes and my will be there for all time.
As for you — if you me the way your father David walked, doing everything I've commanded you, and if you keep my and my —
then I will establish your royal throne, just as I made a with your father David when I said, 'You will never lack a man ruling over Israel.'
But if you and abandon my guidelines and my commands that I've set before you, and go serve other and bow down to them —
then I will them from my land that I gave them. And this house that I my own for my name, I will throw out of my sight and make it a and a among all peoples.
And this house, once so — everyone who passes by it will be and say, 'Why did Yahweh do this to this land and to this house?'
And they will answer, 'Because they Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, who them out of the of They other gods and bowed down to them and served them. That's why he all this on them.'