2 Chronicles 7:11–22

God Appears to Solomon Again

¹¹After King Solomon had finished the Temple and the palace, successfully completing all his plans for them, ¹²the Lord appeared to him at night. He said to him, “I have heard your prayer, and I accept this Temple as the place where sacrifices are to be offered to me. ¹³Whenever I hold back the rain or send locusts to eat up the crops or send an epidemic on my people, ¹⁴if they pray to me and repent and turn away from the evil they have been doing, then I will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins, and make their land prosperous again. ¹⁵I will watch over this Temple and be ready to hear all the prayers that are offered here, ¹⁶because I have chosen it and consecrated it as the place where I will be worshipped for ever. I will watch over it and protect it for all time. ¹⁷If you serve me faithfully as your father David did, obeying my laws and doing everything I have commanded you, ^18*I will keep the promise I made to your father David when I told him that Israel would always be ruled by his descendants. ¹⁹But if you and your people ever disobey the laws and commands I have given you, and worship other gods, ²⁰then I will remove you from the land that I gave you, and I will abandon this Temple that I have consecrated as the place where I am to be worshipped. People everywhere will ridicule it and treat it with contempt.

²¹“The Temple is now greatly honoured, but then everyone who passes by it will be amazed and will ask, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this Temple?’ ²²People will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt. They gave their allegiance to other gods and worshipped them. That is why the Lord has brought this disaster on them.’ ”