2 Chronicles 7-8

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Solomon Dedicates the Temple

7 When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.^{(A) 2} The priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. ³ When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying,

⁴ Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord.^{(C) 5} King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. ⁶ The priests stood at their posts, the Levites also, with the instruments for music to the Lord that King David had made for giving thanks to the Lord—for his steadfast love endures forever—whenever David offered praises through their playing. Opposite them the priests sounded trumpets, and all Israel stood.^(D)

⁷ Solomon consecrated the middle of the court that was in front of the house of the Lord, for there he offered the burnt offerings and the fat of the offerings of well-being because the bronze altar Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat parts.^(E)

⁸ At that time Solomon held the festival for seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great congregation, from Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt.^{(F) 9} On the eighth day they held a solemn assembly, for they had observed the dedication of the altar seven days and the festival seven days.^{(G) 10} On the twenty-third day of the seventh month he sent the people away to their homes, joyful and in good spirits because of the goodness that the Lord had shown to David and to Solomon and to his people Israel.^(H)

¹¹ Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s house; all that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished.^(I)

God’s Second Appearance to Solomon

¹² Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice.^{(J) 13} When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locust to devour the land or send pestilence among my people,^{(K) 14} if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.^{(L) 15} Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.^{(M) 16} For now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time.^{(N) 17} As for you, if you walk before me as your father David walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my ordinances,^{(O) 18} then I will establish your royal throne, as I made a covenant^[a] with your father David saying, ‘You shall never lack a successor to rule over Israel.’^(P)

¹⁹ “But if you^[b] turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you and go and serve other gods and worship them,^{(Q) 20} then I will pluck you^[c] up from the land that I have given you,^[d] and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.^{(R) 21} And regarding this house, now exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this house?’^{(S) 22} Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord the God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods and worshiped them and served them; therefore he has brought all this calamity upon them.’ ”

Various Activities of Solomon

8 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon had built the house of the Lord and his own house,^{(T) 2} Solomon rebuilt the cities that Huram had given to him and settled the people of Israel in them.

³ Solomon went to Hamath-zobah and captured it. ⁴ He built Tadmor in the wilderness and all the storage towns that he built in Hamath. ⁵ He also built Upper Beth-horon and Lower Beth-horon, fortified cities, with walls, gates, and bars,^{(U) 6} and Baalath, as well as all Solomon’s storage towns, and all the towns for his chariots, the towns for his cavalry, and whatever Solomon desired to build, in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. ⁷ All the people who were left of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of Israel, ⁸ from their descendants who were still left in the land, whom the people of Israel had not destroyed—these Solomon conscripted for forced labor, as is still the case today.^{(V) 9} But of the people of Israel Solomon made no slaves for his work; they were soldiers and his officers, the commanders of his chariotry and cavalry. ¹⁰ These were the chief officers of King Solomon, two hundred fifty of them, who exercised authority over the people.

¹¹ Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter from the city of David to the house that he had built for her, for he said, “My wife shall not live in the house of King David of Israel, for the places to which the ark of the Lord has come are holy.”^(W)

¹² Then Solomon offered up burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar of the Lord that he had built in front of the vestibule,^{(X) 13} as the duty of each day required, offering according to the commandment of Moses for the Sabbaths, the new moons, and the three annual festivals: the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths.^{(Y) 14} According to the ordinance of his father David, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their service, and the Levites for their offices of praise and ministry alongside the priests as the duty of each day required, and the gatekeepers in their divisions for the several gates, for so David the man of God had commanded.^{(Z) 15} They did not turn away from what the king had commanded the priests and Levites regarding anything at all or regarding the treasuries.

¹⁶ Thus all the work of Solomon was accomplished, from^[e] the day the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid until the house of the Lord was finished completely.

¹⁷ Then Solomon went to Ezion-geber and Eloth on the shore of the sea, in the land of Edom.^{(AA) 18} Huram sent him, in the care of his servants, ships and servants familiar with the sea. They went to Ophir together with the servants of Solomon and imported from there four hundred fifty talents of gold and brought it to King Solomon.^(AB)