When thy people Israel are put to the worse before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house;
On the day the temple is dedicated, God's glory fills the new house — and Solomon begins naming the disasters ahead of Israel, starting with defeat in battle. Why does a king at the height of his power plan for failure, and what does he expect a beaten people to do?
Solomon treats this defeat as something he expects, not a distant risk.
Solomon entertained no false hopes that Israel would never be defeated by enemies. He does not say "If," but "When Your people are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You." Many times their enemies did defeat Israel because they had sinned against God. So Solomon's prayer is truly prophetic. He asked that God would hear Israel's repentant prayer and restore them by His grace.
The verse traces the lost battle to sin against God. One writer turns that lesson on us.
God had been faithful to Israel, but Israel had not been faithful to God... Whenever we find ourselves under the power of our enemies, we must be sure to charge the fault on ourselves, and not on God. When Joshua lies on his face because the people have turned their backs before the men of Ai, the Lord says to him, "Get up; why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned." Joshua should have known that sin in Israel, not any change in God, was the cause of their being struck down. Nothing can weaken our hands but sin.
Israel must turn back and acknowledge God's name. Solomon had already asked God to put His name in this house.
Solomon, knowing these things, asks God that His name might be there — this name that to faith represents His very person. He asks that God, from His dwelling place in heaven, would hear the king, His servant, and His people Israel when they turn toward His house. He also feels that both the king and the people will need forgiveness, so he prays that God will hear and forgive.
The beaten people are to pray "in this house." Later worshippers kept that direction even when they were far from the building.
The psalmist worships toward the Lord's holy temple. This shows that the godly man is not yet settled in the land. Like Daniel, though not in the temple, he prays toward it, trusting Solomon's prayer. Solomon had asked God to hear His people in their trouble, if they prayed toward the city God had chosen and toward the house built for the glory of His Name.
One writer separates the two grounds Solomon stands on in this prayer: promise, and mercy.
The first ground he takes is the promise conditionally given to his father David. In the second, it is the mercy of God that can forgive after sin is committed. For sin has appeared — in any man, or in the whole nation — even though Solomon himself is not guilty. So the kingdom would be lost unless God in His mercy went beyond the terms of His covenant with David. Forgiveness would not be needed if the king and the people had fully kept the conditions laid on them, because God's promise depended on their obedience. So in the case of sin there can be no cry but for forgiveness.
The same shape runs through every request in the prayer.
It is the model prayer for Israel. It ties confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness to every request. It owns sin as the one cause of all troubles and disaster. So the prayer taught Israel to throw itself on the Lord, pleading and repenting of sin. There Israel finds that the Lord hears and delivers His people.
Read as a whole, this prayer traces Israel's future.
The glory of the Lord fills the temple. It is a picture of the coming reign of Christ. Solomon's prayer looks on to that reign, but takes up the time in between as well. He counts on the coming glory, as it were, and pleads for mercy in view of it; he sees the scattering of rebellious Israel. His prayer is a divine forecast of their history, put in the language of supplication. Grace will restore the nation to the rule and glory of Christ.
- Cause. Defeat before an enemy is not bad luck. The verse names sin against God as the reason, and Israel's history proved it again and again.
- Certainty. Solomon says "when," not "if" — he builds the temple already knowing his people will need it as a place of return.
- Confession. The way back is to turn, own God's name, and pray toward the house where He set that name — a name that stands for His person.
- Compassion. Once sin is there, promise alone cannot help. The only cry left is for forgiveness, and mercy reaches beyond the covenant's terms.
- Comeback. The prayer forecasts Israel's whole story. Its last word is grace, restoring the nation to the rule and glory of Christ.
then hear thou in the heavens, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land that thou gavest unto their fathers.
Solomon is dedicating the new temple. In the middle of that bright day he prays about dark ones — days when Israel sins and an enemy defeats them. He asks three things: that God would hear from heaven, forgive, and bring the people back to the land He gave their fathers.
Solomon does not treat national defeat as a remote possibility. One commentator points to the word Solomon chose, and to how Israel's later history matched it.
Solomon had no false hope that enemies would never defeat Israel. He does not say "If," but "When Your people are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You …" (v.33). Many times enemies really did defeat Israel because they had sinned against God. So Solomon's prayer is prophetic. He asked that God would hear Israel's repentant prayer and restore them by His grace (v.34).
The defeat is not bad luck. Solomon names who stands behind it.
He allows for the case (vv. 33-34) where the people have sinned against the Lord, so He would raise up enemies to strike them. If the people would repent and seek the Lord in His house, God would pardon them and cause them to return to their land.
Two verses earlier Solomon had asked God to justify the righteous. Here he asks for something different. One commentator sets the two words side by side.
But we must remember that among people, only the innocent can be justified and the guilty forgiven. Solomon realised this when praying at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8). In verse 32 he prays: "Hear in heaven, and act, and judge Your servants, condemning the wicked, … and justifying the righteous." Then in verse 34 he prays again: "Hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your people Israel."
The people pray toward the temple, but Solomon asks God to hear somewhere else. The temple went with the law and the covenant. Pardon had to come from somewhere higher.
Forgiveness is linked with God in His dwelling-place, the heaven of heavens, and not with the house. For grace is sovereign and has its source in God dwelling in the heavens. The temple and its splendour suited the law and the covenant, but forgiveness is with God in His dwelling-place. That is where Solomon looks… For if God judged on the principle of law, and on righteousness apart from grace, He would — yes, He must — forsake His house and leave Israel under the awful judgment of a broken covenant. Again and again he says "hear and forgive." And God did hear and forgive, time after time, in His government of them, until He had to judge. Solomon knows there is no one who does not sin, and he stands before the holiness and righteousness of God, Who can only meet man on the ground of infinite mercy and sovereign grace. He did not know, as we do, how that mercy is secured — yes, how it overflows — through the cross of Christ.
Centuries afterwards, Daniel prayed with his windows open toward a ruined city. One writer asks what gave him the right to do that.
Was there any divine reason for Daniel's praying toward Jerusalem? There certainly was! First, God had said to Solomon, about the temple at Jerusalem, "My eyes and My heart will be there for all time." Jerusalem was God's centre. It was, it is, and ever shall be. True, it was in ruins — the temple was in ruins; but God's word was not in ruins, and here is faith's simple but solid warrant.
Solomon asks for a return to the land. One writer measures how far ahead that looks.
But the prophetic prayer of Solomon takes in a return and a gathering of them all back again to their land. He reaches forward to the millennial day.
- Cause. Defeat came because they had sinned; God Himself raised up the enemies that struck them.
- Turn. Solomon expected it — he says "when," not "if" — and the only way back begins with repentance and seeking God at His house.
- Hear. Solomon asks for pardon from heaven, God's dwelling-place, not from the temple, because grace is sovereign and has its source there.
- Forgive. Verse 32 asks God to justify the righteous; verse 34 asks Him to forgive a guilty people. Only the innocent can be justified; the guilty are forgiven — and the cross of Christ is where that mercy is secured.
- Return. Restoration to the land comes by grace. The prayer outlives Solomon's day: it was faith's warrant when the city lay in ruins, and it reaches on to the millennial day.
When the heavens are shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, because thou hast afflicted them;
Solomon is dedicating the new temple in Jerusalem. His prayer looks ahead to troubles that could one day fall on Israel, and asks God in advance to hear His people when they come. This verse takes one of those troubles, a sky that gives no rain. It names the cause, and it sets out the way back.
A sky that gives no rain was never just bad weather. Israel knew what a shut heaven did to the land:
What barrenness and desolation there must be when heaven is shut up! No refreshing showers coming down, no dewdrops falling, no communication between heaven and earth. How often Israel had tasted the awful reality of this!
So the drought carried a message, and Israel was meant to read it:
The famine then was God's call to repentance, and they should always have taken it that way: "When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You." Even where there had been no public turning away from God, such an affliction should have brought them on their faces, searching their hearts and asking, Why is this?
Solomon does not pray as though his people would always do well. He assumes they will sin, and asks God to leave a door open.
All their privileges were tied to obedience. Yet along with that came a gracious resource, should failure come in — a resource they plainly failed to use in their time of need.
Solomon does not ask God to set His standards aside. He asks for mercy inside them, and says how little it takes to reach it:
He supposes that plagues, drought, famine, locusts, enemy attacks, or the like might strike the land because of its inhabitants' unfaithfulness. If they repented in heart, the prayer of only one man would be enough, as they stretched out their hands toward this house. He asks that God would then hear in heaven and forgive, yet still render to each according to his ways, so that He might be feared. It is still law, but with as much mercy as law could allow, if God would find truth in the heart.
Prayer toward the house, confession of God's name, and turning from sin stand together. In Elijah's day, under this very drought, Israel met none of them:
Note the words, "if they pray toward this place." Israel did nothing of the kind in Elijah's day. Their hearts were stubborn. They had no sense of guilt. They were in no mood to humble themselves before God. As for His beloved centre, they had definitely turned their backs on it.
What was true of Israel's drought holds for prayer in general:
It is useless to pray while persisting in sin. The man who does not seek to walk with God has no right to expect anything from Him... If prayer goes unanswered, if the heavens seem like brass, it is a solemn sign of a wrong state of soul. It should lead to self-judgment and to giving up every evil way.
The verse ties the turning to the trouble: they turn because God afflicts them.
"You chasten" is the admission that behind the hand of those who trouble God's people there is the hand of God dealing with His people. "You teach" is the acknowledgment that through chastening God teaches His people. He shows them what is in their own hearts, and also the grace, the goodness, and the holiness of His own heart, so that they distrust themselves and rest in God.
God told Solomon that He had heard this prayer. Years later, after Israel had killed Baal's prophets, that answer became Elijah's ground to pray for rain:
Solomon had asked God to give rain on these terms: when heaven was shut up, if there was prayer, confession of the LORD's name, and a turning from sin. And the LORD had told Solomon that He had heard his prayer. The people had confessed the LORD's name, and had openly rejected Baal by killing his prophets. So Elijah prayed with full confidence that God would keep His word in mercy, just as He had already kept it in judgment. Again it was a matter of asking God to fulfil His own word.
Israel had a building to face when trouble came. What stands in its place now?
God's house in Jerusalem was then the gathering place of His people, and there His people were to pray in days of difficulty. Now the house of the Lord is the assembly, and its gathering centre is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today you and I have a wonderful privilege. In the name of His own Son we can bring before God everything that concerns Him, sure that He will hear and help.
- Cause — A shut sky is not bad luck. It is God's answer to sin and His call to repentance. The first question under it is, Why is this?
- Provision — Solomon expected failure and asked for a way back. Mercy runs through his prayer, yet God still deals with each person according to his ways.
- Conditions — Praying, confessing His name, and turning from sin belong together. Pray while holding on to sin, and the heavens stay like brass.
- Purpose — The affliction itself teaches. God chastens to show His people their own hearts and His goodness, so that they stop trusting themselves and rest in Him.
- Result — God said He had heard this prayer, so faith could plead it. Elijah asked for rain on the strength of God's own word, and rain came.