Study Desk

If they do wrong against you, (for no man is without sin,) and you are angry with them and give them up into the power of those who are fighting against them, so that they take them away as prisoners into a strange land, far off or near;

And with all their heart and soul are turned again to you, in the land of those who took them prisoners, and make their prayer to you, turning their eyes to this land which you gave to their fathers, and to the town which you took for yourself, and the house which I made for your name:

Answering with forgiveness the people who have done wrong against you, and overlooking the evil which they have done against you; let those who made them prisoners be moved with pity for them, and have pity on them;

For they are your people and your heritage, which you took out of Egypt, out of the iron fireplace;

Let your eyes be open to your servant's prayer for grace and to the prayer of your people Israel, hearing them when their cry comes to you.

For you made them separate from all the peoples of the earth, to be your heritage, as you said by Moses your servant, when you took our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.

Then Solomon, after making all these prayers and requests for grace to the Lord, got up from his knees before the altar of the Lord, where his hands had been stretched out in prayer to heaven;

And Solomon gave to the Lord for peace-offerings, twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel kept the feast of the opening of the Lord's house.

The same day the king made holy the middle of the open square in front of the house of the Lord, offering there the burned offering and the meal offering and the fat of the peace-offerings; for there was not room on the brass altar of the Lord for the burned offerings and the meal offerings and the fat of the peace-offerings.

So Solomon and all Israel with him, a very great meeting, (for the people had come together from the way into Hamath to the river of Egypt,) kept the feast at that time before the Lord our God, for two weeks, even fourteen days.

And the Lord said to him, Your prayers and your requests for grace have come to my ears: I have made holy this house which you have made, and I have put my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

As for you, if you will go on your way before me, as David your father did, uprightly and with a true heart, doing what I have given you orders to do, keeping my laws and my decisions;

Then I will make the seat of your rule over Israel certain for ever, as I gave my word to David your father, saying, You will never be without a man to be king in Israel.

Then I will have Israel cut off from the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for myself, I will put away from before my eyes; and Israel will be a public example, and a word of shame among all peoples.

And their answer will be, Because they were turned away from the Lord their God, who took their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they took for themselves other gods and gave them worship and became their servants: that is why the Lord has sent all this evil on them.

Now, this was the way of Solomon's system of forced work for the building of the Lord's house and of the king's house, and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Megiddo and Gezer. Three dots are used where it is no longer possible to be certain of the true sense of the Hebrew words, and for this reason no attempt has been made to put them into Basic English.

Pharaoh, king of Egypt, came and took Gezer, burning it down and putting to death the Canaanites living in the town, and he gave it for a bride-offering to his daughter, Solomon's wife. Three dots are used where it is no longer possible to be certain of the true sense of the Hebrew words, and for this reason no attempt has been made to put them into Basic English.

Three dots are used where it is no longer possible to be certain of the true sense of the Hebrew words, and for this reason no attempt has been made to put them into Basic English. and Solomon was the builder of Gezer and Beth-horon the lower,

And all the store-towns and the towns which Solomon had for his war-carriages and for his horsemen, and everything which it was his pleasure to put up in Jerusalem and in Lebanon and in all the land under his rule.

As for the rest of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not children of Israel;