2 Chronicles 7:11–22

If My People Pray

^11dThus 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. ¹²Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer ^eand have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. ^13fWhen 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, ¹⁴if my people who are called by my name ^ghumble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. ^15hNow my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. ^16eFor now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. ¹⁷And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, ¹⁸then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ⁱ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’

^19j“But if you³ turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, ^20kthen I will pluck you⁴ up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it ^la proverb and a byword among all peoples. ²¹And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ^m‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ ²²Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’ ”