and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them
Solomon is ending his prayer at the dedication of the temple, and he has just pictured the worst future for Israel: sin, defeat, and exile in an enemy's land. Verse 50 is his plea for that moment: that God would forgive it all, and then soften the hearts of the people holding Israel captive.
Forgiveness sought on the ground of grace
Solomon does not ask God to overlook one slip. He asks Him to forgive the whole record. One commentator, writing on this same prayer in 2 Chronicles, notes where Solomon sends that request — past the building he has just finished:
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 splendour suited the law and the covenant well. But forgiveness is with God in His dwelling-place... For suppose God judged on the principle of law, on righteousness apart from grace. Then He would — yes, He must — forsake His house and leave Israel under the awful judgment of a broken covenant.
A prayer that reads like prophecy
Solomon is praying about a captivity that has not yet happened. Commentators see his words reaching far past his own day:
Leslie M. GrantThis section (vv. 46-53) bears directly on Israel's condition today. They sinned terribly against God by rejecting His beloved Son, and so they were carried away into other lands. Solomon likely did not realise that a dispersion would last for centuries, as it has.
Compassion in the eyes of the captors
Solomon asks God to make Israel's captors pity them. He rests the plea on who these people still belong to:
Leslie M. GrantGod will indeed then grant them compassion before their enemies. Those enemies will show compassion to the people they once persecuted. Solomon pleaded with God on one basis: the children of Israel were God's people, God's inheritance, whom He had brought out of Egypt (v. 51). Though Israel's failures were great, Solomon had confidence that God would not give them up. He had in fact set them apart from all the peoples of the earth as His inheritance, and He would not let that setting apart come to nothing (v. 53).
Commentators find the same pattern running through Israel's history:
Numerical Bible NotesBut in their distress He could not but show His pity still; and His covenant of promise was a necessary limit to their chastisement. Through all their wanderings and in their captivity He still caused mercy to be shown to them by those who were His instruments to chasten them.
Why the request could be made at all
Solomon is praying inside a system of law, for a people who have broken it. That leaves one resource, and behind the praying king commentators see a greater one:
H. L. RossierYet a resource still exists. The house is there, and God cannot deny His promises. Solomon does not refer to the law, but to grace. By pure grace the God of the promises had saved His people from Egypt — could He deny this grace, even under the system of law? They are His people; shall God abandon them? No — if in repentance they turn toward the land, the city, and the house, God will listen to them... And this Solomon himself is but a weak picture of the true King, the true Servant of the Lord. Christ's intercession causes God to receive this people anew.
Words later believers leaned on
Solomon's words did not stay in Solomon's day. Another writer traces them into Jonah's prayer:
G C WillisSurely Jonah's mind turned back to Solomon's prayer at the dedication of that temple... It was on the ground of words such as these that Jonah had authority from the Lord Himself to count on the mercy of God to forgive his sin, and deliver him.
Solomon's reason for asking reaches wider than Israel:
J. T. MawsonThere was no difference in this, no exception, for as Solomon said, there is no one who does not sin. And no man was able to deliver himself from the tempter's power, to break the yoke of sin, or wash out the stain of it.
Summary
- Cause — Solomon prays because no one is sinless. Israel's future has to rest on forgiveness.
- Source — He looks past the temple to God in heaven. Forgiveness flows from sovereign grace, not from a fine building or a broken covenant.
- Gift — God forgives the whole record: the sin, and every transgression with it.
- Reach — Mercy reaches into enemy hands. The people God used to punish Israel end up pitying them.
- Result — The scattering is not over yet. Israel's restoration rests on the intercession of the true King, of whom Solomon is only a weak picture.