2 Chroniques 7

Fire from heaven

¹As soon as Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and devoured the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the house was filled with the glory of the LORD. ²The priests were unable to enter the house of the LORD, since the house of the LORD was full of the glory of the LORD. ³All the Israelites saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD over the house, and they knelt with their faces to the ground on the pavement. They worshiped and gave the LORD thanks, for he is good; his loyal love lasts forever. ⁴Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the LORD.

⁵King Solomon offered as sacrifices 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep. In this way the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. ⁶The priests stood at their posts, and so did the Levites with the instruments for the LORD’s music that King David had made for giving thanks to the LORD, for his loyal love lasts forever, whenever David offered praise through them. Opposite them the priests sounded the trumpets, and all Israel stood.

⁷Solomon made holy the central part of the courtyard before the house of the LORD. He offered there the burnt offerings and the fat parts of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offerings, the grain offerings and the fat. ⁸So at that time Solomon held the festival for seven days, and all Israel with him, an enormous assembly from Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt. ⁹On the eighth day they held a solemn assembly, for they had kept the dedication of the altar for seven days and the festival for seven days.^{a 10}On the twenty-third day of the seventh month he let the people go home, joyful and glad at heart for the good the LORD had done for David and for Solomon and for Israel his people. ¹¹So Solomon completed the house of the LORD and the royal palace. Everything he had set his heart on doing in the house of the LORD and in his own palace, he carried out with success.

The LORD appears to Solomon again

¹²Then during the night the LORD appeared to Solomon. He said to him, “I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. ¹³When I shut up the sky so that no rain falls, or command locusts to eat up the land, or send a plague among my people, ¹⁴and if my people who bear my name humble themselves and pray, seek my face and turn back from their evil ways, then I myself will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin and heal their land.^{b 15}Now my eyes will be open, and my ears will attend to the prayer made in this place. ¹⁶Now I have chosen this house and set it apart as holy, so that my name may stay there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. ¹⁷As for you, if you live before me as your father David did, doing everything I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rulings, ¹⁸then I will make the throne of your kingdom secure, as I promised in my covenant with your father David when I said, ‘There will always be a man of your line ruling in Israel.’ ¹⁹But if all of you turn away and abandon my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and instead go off to serve other gods and bow down to them, ²⁰then I will uproot them from my land that I have given them, and I will cast this house that I have made holy for my name out of my sight. I will make it a proverb and a byword among all the peoples. ²¹And this house, high as it once stood, will leave everyone who passes by it appalled. They will ask, ‘Why has the LORD dealt like this with this land and this house?’^{c 22}And people will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods and worshiped and served them. That is why he has brought all this disaster on them.’”