Second Book of Chronicles 7

¹ When Solomon had finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the holocaust and the sacrifices; and the glory of Yahweh filled the Temple.

² The priests could not enter the house of Yahweh, because the glory of Yahweh filled the house of Yahweh.

³ All the sons of Israel, seeing the fire come down and the glory of Yahweh resting on the Temple, bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the earth; they worshipped and gave praise to Yahweh, ‘for he is good, for his love is everlasting’.

⁴ Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before Yahweh.

⁵ King Solomon offered twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep in sacrifice; and so the king and all the people dedicated the Temple of Yahweh.

⁶ The priests stood in their places, while the Levites gave praise to Yahweh on the instruments that David had made to accompany the canticles of Yahweh, ‘for his love is everlasting’. These performed the hymns of praise that David had composed. By their side were the priests sounding the trumpet, while all Israel stood.

⁷ Solomon consecrated the middle of the court that is in front of the Temple of Yahweh; he offered the holocaust there and the fatty parts of the communion sacrifices, since the bronze altar Solomon had made could not hold the holocaust, the oblation and the fatty parts.

⁸ Solomon then celebrated the feast for seven days and all the Israelites gathered together with him in enormous numbers from the Pass of Hamath to the wadi of Egypt.

⁹ On the eighth day they held a propitiation ceremony, for they had been seven days dedicating the altar and seven days celebrating the feast.

¹⁰ On the twenty-third day of the seventh month Solomon dismissed the people to their homes, rejoicing and with happy hearts for the goodness Yahweh had shown to David and to Solomon and to his people Israel.

¹¹ Solomon finished the Temple of Yahweh and the royal palace and successfully concluded all he had set his heart on doing in the house of Yahweh and in his own.

¹² Then Yahweh appeared to Solomon in the night and said, ‘I grant your prayer. I choose this place for myself to be a house of sacrifice.

¹³ When I close the skies and there is no rain, when I command the locust to devour the land, when I send pestilence among my people,

¹⁴ then if my people who bear my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my presence and turn from their wicked ways, I myself will hear from heaven and forgive their sins and restore their land.

¹⁵ Now and for the future my eyes are open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is offered in this place.

¹⁶ Now and for the future I have chosen and consecrated this house for my name to be there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there for ever.

¹⁷ For your part, if you walk before me as David your father did, if you do all that I order you and keep my statutes and my ordinances,

¹⁸ I will make your royal throne secure, according to the compact I made with David your father when I said: You shall never lack for a man to rule in Israel.

¹⁹ But if you turn away from me and forsake the commandments and statutes I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them,

²⁰ then I will tear the Israelites from the land I have given them, and I will reject from my presence this Temple that I have consecrated for my name and make it a proverb and a byword among all the nations.

²¹ As for this Temple, now so exalted, all who pass by will be astounded; they will whistle and say, “Why has Yahweh treated this country and this Temple like this?”

²² And the answer will be, “Because they forsook Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and worshipped them and served them; that is why he has brought all these disasters on them”.’