Scripture Daily

Context No. 219 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 6:28-33: in context

28“If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence, if there is blight or mildew, locust or caterpillar; if their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is— 29whatever prayer and supplication is made by any man, or by all your people Israel, who will each know his own plague and his own sorrow, and shall spread out his hands toward this house, 30then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive, and give to every man according to all his ways, whose heart you know (for you, even you only, know the hearts of the children of men), 31that they may fear you, to walk in your ways as long as they live in the land which you gave to our fathers. 32“Moreover, concerning the foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, when he comes from a far country for your great name’s sake and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm, when they come and pray toward this house, 33then hear from heaven, even from 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 and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by your name.

Solomon has finished building the temple, and this passage is part of the long prayer he prays at its dedication. He is standing before the new house and imagining, one situation at a time, all the trouble that will one day drive people to turn toward it and pray.

Most of the list is his own people in distress. Famine, plague, blight on the crops, locusts, an enemy army at the gates. He asks that when anyone, knowing his own particular sorrow, spreads out his hands toward this house, God would hear from heaven and forgive and deal with each person according to what God alone knows of his heart. It is intimate. Every person his own affliction, every person his own prayer.

Then Solomon turns to someone the prayer did not have to include. The foreigner, he says, the one who is not of your people Israel, who comes from a far country because he has heard of your name. When that outsider prays toward this house, do everything he asks, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as Israel does. He asks God to answer the stranger as openly as his own people, and he does it at the building's dedication, before it has been used even once. Who have I already decided is outside the reach of the house I pray in?

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