2 Chronicles 7:11–22

God’s Promise and Warning

^11aThus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s palace, and successfully completed all that ¹he had planned on doing in the house of the Lord and in his palace.

¹²Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and ^ahave chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice.

¹³“^aIf I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people,

^14aand My people ¹who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

¹⁵“^aNow My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the ¹prayer offered in this place.

¹⁶“For ^anow I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.

¹⁷“As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, even to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep My statutes and My ordinances,

¹⁸then I will establish your royal throne as I covenanted with your father David, saying, ‘^1aYou shall not lack a man to be ruler in Israel.’

¹⁹“^aBut if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them,

^20athen I will uproot you from My land which I have given ¹you, and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight and I will make it ^ba proverb and a byword among all peoples.

²¹“As for this house, which was exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘^aWhy has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’

²²“And they will say, ‘Because ^athey forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them from the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this adversity on them.’ ”