2 Chronicles 7

1As Solomon brought his prayer to an end, fire descended from heaven and devoured the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and Yahweh’s glory filled the house.

2The priests were unable to go into Yahweh’s house, because Yahweh’s glory had filled the house of Yahweh.

3All the Israelites were watching as the fire descended and the glory of Yahweh came upon the house. They knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, bowed down in worship, and gave thanks to Yahweh: “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

4The king and all the people were offering sacrifices in Yahweh’s presence.

5King Solomon sacrificed twenty-two thousand cattle and 120,000 sheep as his offering. In this way the king and all the people dedicated God’s house.

6The priests were standing at their stations, and the Levites stood with Yahweh’s musical instruments, which King David had made for thanking Yahweh—“for his steadfast love endures forever”—whenever David praised through them. Facing them, the priests sounded the trumpets, while all Israel remained standing.

7Solomon also consecrated the central part of the courtyard in front of Yahweh’s house, because that is where he presented the burnt offerings and the fat of the fellowship offerings; the bronze altar that Solomon had made was too small to hold the burnt offering, the grain offering, and the fat portions.

8At that time Solomon celebrated the festival for seven days, with all Israel joining him—an enormous assembly from Lebo-hamath all the way to the Wadi of Egypt.

9On the eighth day they gathered for a closing assembly, since they had spent seven days dedicating the altar and seven days on the festival.

10Then on the twenty-third day of the seventh month he dismissed the people to their tents, rejoicing and glad at heart because of the goodness Yahweh had shown to David, to Solomon, and to his people Israel.

11So Solomon completed Yahweh’s house and the king’s palace; everything that had come to Solomon’s mind to do in Yahweh’s house and in his own house, he brought to success.

12Yahweh appeared to Solomon during the night and told him, “I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place to be my house of sacrifice.

13If I close up the sky so that no rain falls, or if I order locusts to eat up the land, or if I send a plague among my people,

14and my people, who are known by my name, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn back from their evil ways, then I will listen from heaven, pardon their sin, and heal their land.

15From now on my eyes will be open, and my ears will pay attention to prayer made in this place.

16I have now chosen this house and set it apart as holy, so that my name will be there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

17And you—if you live before me as your father David lived, doing everything I have commanded you and observing my statutes and my ordinances,

18then I will make your royal throne secure, in keeping with the covenant I made with your father David: ‘You will never be without a man to rule in Israel.’

19But if all of you turn away and abandon my statutes and commandments that I have placed before you, and go off to serve other gods and bow down to them,

20then I will pull them up by the roots from my land that I gave them, and I will throw this house that I made holy for my name out of my sight; I will make it something all the peoples use as a proverb and a taunt.

21This house that was so exalted—everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will ask, ‘Why did Yahweh do such a thing to this land and to this house?’

22People will reply, ‘It is because they turned away from Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, who led them out of the land of Egypt, and they clung to other gods, bowing down to them and serving them. That is why he brought all this calamity on them.’”