If I shut up the heavens that there be no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;
God's answer to Solomon's prayer opens not with prosperity but with three troubles: drought, locusts and plague. The pronoun is what startles — God does not say these things may happen, but that He shuts, He commands, He sends.
Solomon had prayed about drought, failed crops and sickness. God's answer matches his prayer point by point, and changes one word in it.
The Lord is as detailed and particular in His answer as Solomon was in his prayer... Solomon prays for Israel as the Lord's people. In his prayer he said, "Your people." The Lord owns them as His, and says, "My people."
Israel's land lived on rain from the sky. A neighbour with a great river of its own felt no such loss.
Things on earth must be terrible when "the heaven is shut up." This world must look barren and dreary when heaven holds back its refreshing showers. That is especially true of the land that was to "drink water by the rain from heaven." Egypt might not have cared much when heaven was shut up, since she had never looked there for her supplies. She had her resources in herself. "My river is my own," was her independent language.
God held the rain back for a reason.
We know well that it is not God's desire that His people should suffer. He is not stingy, and if the rain is withheld, the fault is with His people and not with Him. He had made this clear to them, so that they understood well that when heaven was "shut up" it was in chastening.
Insects take orders. A locust swarm looks like blind appetite, but Scripture calls it an army.
Man may have departed from God and become hostile to Him, but nature in its whole framework is obedient, and serves Him still. So the sinner finds himself in a stream of forces set against him — the hosts of the Lord, pictured for us by the army of locusts. "The locusts have no king," says Agur, "yet all of them march in rank" (Prov. 30:27)... They keep this discipline by instinct, with no king in sight. That shows whose armies they are and who orders their ranks: the Lord calls them "His army" (Joel 2:11).
David had already lived through the third of these troubles. Given a choice of judgments, he took the one that came straight from God's hand.
David owns the great difficulty and perplexity of his soul, but he chooses the last; and he was right. "Let me fall into the hand of Jehovah, for very great are His mercies. Let me not fall into the hand of man." David preferred — and rightly, in my opinion — the direct hand of Jehovah... he could not bear the thought of God seeming to starve His people and leave them to a slow death. He could not bear the enemy triumphing over Israel either.
Because the hand is God's, hard times call for more than endurance. They call for a question.
The famine, then, was God's call to repentance. It should always have been taken that way: "When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain because they have sinned against You." Even where there had been no open turning away from God, such trouble should always have brought them onto their faces, searching their hearts and asking, Why is this?
God's discipline moves in steps. He measures each one, and stops it the moment it has done its work.
These steps show how Jehovah's heart longed over His rebellious people. He chastised them only as much as was needed to lead them to repentance... If that had brought them to repentance, God would have stopped dealing with them in government. But when it failed, He would send drought, and the famine that followed.
Israel later met every trouble on this list and still learned nothing from it.
There had been famines and drought. Rain fell here and there: some patches of ground got rain while others stayed parched, so that they might see the hand of God in it... The locusts came and devoured the plants. There were dreadful plagues and other judgments, but they did not return to Him. Five times in this paragraph we find the same statement: "Yet you did not return to Me."
- The hand. God claims authorship of the drought, the locusts and the plague — He shuts, He commands, He sends.
- The obedience. Even locusts march under orders; nature still serves the God man has walked away from.
- The purpose. God measures the chastening only as far as it takes to bring repentance, and stops it when it works.
- The response. Hard seasons should put God's people on their faces asking, "Why is this?" The fault lies with them, never with God.
- The mercy. The Lord's own hand is the safest hand to fall into, because His mercies are very great. Yet Israel took every blow and still did not return.
and my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from the heavens, and forgive their sin, and heal their land.
God appeared to Solomon the night after the king dedicated the temple, and answered the prayer he had just prayed. They deal with a hard question: what happens when God's own people fail, and He Himself shuts the sky over their heads?
Solomon had stood before God and pleaded for the nation. This promise is God's reply. One writer notes that the reply is fuller here than in the parallel account in Kings.
In the previous chapter Solomon took the place of one who pleads for others. God gives him a full answer (vv. 13-14), and Kings does not record it... From the moment Solomon stands before God, the answer to his pleading is certain. The people's unfaithfulness may delay it. It is still a real fact, granted because the king God had anointed asked for it.
Notice the shift in the pronoun between the prayer and the answer. God answers in the same detail Solomon prayed in, and changes one word.
The Lord is as detailed in His answer as Solomon was in his prayer... Solomon prays for Israel as the Lord's people, and in his prayer he said, "Your people." The Lord claims them as His own and says, "My people."
The verse begins with "if," and what comes before it is a list of troubles God says He Himself sends.
The Lord then answered Solomon's prayer about how He disciplines Israel. He may hold back rain, or send locusts, or send disease. If Israel would humble themselves and pray, seeking God's face, and turn from their evil ways, then God would hear from heaven, forgive them, and heal their land (vv. 13-14).
That changes how we should read trouble. God never meant hard times to be endured in silence or explained away.
A famine, then, was God's call to repentance, and they should always have read it that way: "When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain because they have sinned against You." Even when there had been no open turning away from God, such trouble should have brought them face down before Him. It should have made them search their hearts and ask, Why is this?
The promise is generous, but it has limits. God asks four things before He gives anything: humbling, praying, seeking His face, turning.
There can be no recovery apart from the conditions named in these verses. His people who have failed must first humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn away from their evil ways.
Solomon had asked God to keep His eyes open and His ears attentive to prayer at that house. The reply grants that, and then goes further.
The excess seen in 2 Chronicles 7 is delightful. Both Solomon and Nehemiah ask that God's eyes and ears be open to His people. God adds to that and says, "My heart." It is a blessed thing to see. God's eyes and ears are turned towards His people, and His heart is towards them too.
God said His name would be at that house forever, yet the building came down. One writer asks why, and gives a blunt answer.
God says again that He had chosen the temple and set it apart for Himself. His name would be there forever, and His eyes and His heart would be there always (v. 16). Yet after this the temple was destroyed and there has been no temple in Jerusalem for centuries! Why is this? Because Israel themselves were guilty of desecrating the temple.
The principle in this verse is not confined to Israel's fields and rainfall. One writer traces the same order in a day of defeat: it starts in self-confidence and ends in the dust.
That memorable day began in the pride of confidence in self, but it ends with torn clothes in the dust before God. It is a merciful provision of grace, for if it did not end there, where else could it end? There restoration begins, and there only... The same thing is true now; restoration can only come after confession, whether for one believer or for a whole company.
- The cause. Shut skies, locusts and disease are named by God as His own chastening — trouble is a call to repentance, not just a misfortune to escape.
- The conditions. Humble, pray, seek His face, turn. There is no recovery apart from these; the "if" is real.
- The claim. Solomon prayed about "Your people"; God answered about "My people" — He owns the very people He is disciplining.
- The excess. Solomon asked for God's eyes and ears; God added His heart as well, and grounded the whole answer in the intercession of His anointed king.
- The result. Forgiveness first, then a healed land — and where Israel ignored the conditions, they lost the temple itself. Restoration begins in the dust, and only there.