And listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.
Solomon has just finished the temple, a house of unmatched splendour. In the same breath he asks God to listen from somewhere else — from heaven. Before he names a single sin, he asks God to forgive. One question shapes the whole prayer: if God's Name is on the house, why look to heaven for pardon?
The house on earth, the dwelling in heaven
One writer sets the temple God filled beside the place God calls home.
James BoydSomeone may point me to the temple that Solomon built as a dwelling place for God, a house where God is said to have taken up His home. True, the glory of God filled that temple, and He could be said to sit between the cherubim. Yet in his prayer Solomon speaks to Him as in heaven: "And listen in heaven Your dwelling place."
So what does Solomon ask for the house he has built?
H. L. RossierSolomon asks God that His name might be there. To faith, that name stands for His very person. He asks God to hear from His dwelling place in heaven — to hear the king, His servant, and His people Israel when they turn toward His house. At the same time he feels that both the king and the people will need forgiveness: "And when You hear, forgive."
Forgiveness before a single sin is named
The word "forgive" arrives early — before the list of troubles that fills the rest of the chapter. Why so soon? One writer points to what Solomon knew about human weakness.
W. W. FeredayKnowing something of what weak human nature can do, Solomon used the word "forgive" before he mentioned any specific evil (verse 30). He then sets out the likely needs and troubles to come: personal trespasses (verses 31-32), military defeat (verses 33-34), drought (verses 35-36), famine, disease and the like (verses 37-40), danger in war (verses 44-45), and captivity in a strange land (verses 46-50).
This prayer was not meant for one day only.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIt is the model prayer for Israel. Confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness runs through every petition. It names sin as the one cause of all troubles and disaster. So Solomon's prayer taught Israel to throw itself on the Lord, pleading and repenting of sin, and to find that the Lord hears and delivers His people.
Why pardon comes from heaven
Why does the verse point to the house and to heaven at once?
The Bible TreasuryForgiveness 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 magnificence were well suited for the law and the covenant, but forgiveness is with God in His dwelling place. That is where Solomon looks. … He did not know, as we do, how the cross of Christ secures that mercy, and makes it overflow.
A direction to turn when you pray
Solomon asks God to hear prayers made "toward this place." Long after, with the temple in ruins, Daniel still prayed toward Jerusalem. One writer asks what right he had to do it.
C. H. MackintoshWas there any divine reason for Daniel's praying toward Jerusalem? Certainly there was!… Jerusalem was God's centre. It was, it is, and always 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.
Built for the worst days, not the best
The prayer also reaches the days of captivity, when Israel would be far away with no temple to turn to.
The Bible TreasuryEven there would He hear the supplication and confessions of the repentant. Through His inspired servant the Holy Spirit gives this repeated cry: "Then hear from the heavens, Your dwelling place." It teaches the humble and broken-hearted to look up through the surrounding gloom to God's eternal dwelling place. It is a gracious hint for the last, closing days of the people's long captivity. They are in a far country. They have no access to the temple. Every outward mark of their still being God's chosen people is gone. Let them only look up to the heaven of heavens, and He who sits on the throne will hear, and will forgive.
Summary
- Place — God's Name rests on the house, and that Name stands for God Himself. Prayer aims at the house; God is never shut inside it.
- Address — Prayer goes toward the temple, but God hears it in heaven, His dwelling place.
- Pardon — Solomon asks for forgiveness before he names a single sin, and he asks heaven for it. The house held law and covenant; grace is sovereign and comes from God above.
- Pattern — Confession runs through every later request. It taught a nation to trace its troubles to sin and throw itself on God.
- Persistence — The appeal goes to heaven, so it still works when the temple is rubble and the worshipper is far from home. Daniel proved it, praying toward a ruined city on the strength of God's unruined word.