1Then did Solomon assemble the elders of Israel, all the heads of the tribes, the patriarchal chieftains of the Israelites, round King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD from the City of David, which is Zion. 2And every man of Israel assembled round Solomon in the month of Ethanim, which is the seventh month, at the festival. 3And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests carried the Ark. 4And they brought up the Ark of the LORD and the Tent of Meeting and all the sacred vessels that were in the Tent, and the priests and the Levites brought them up. 5And King Solomon and all the community of Israel who had gathered round him were with him before the Ark, sacrificing sheep and oxen that could not be numbered for their abundance. 6And the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD to its place, to the sanctuary of the house, to the Holy of Holies, beneath the wings of the cherubim. 7For the cherubim spread wings over the place of the Ark, and the cherubim sheltered the Ark and its poles from above. 8And the poles extended, and the ends of the poles could be seen from the Holy Place in the front of the sanctuary, but they could not be seen from without, and they have been there to this day. 9There was nothing in the Ark except the two stone tablets that Moses had put there on Horeb, which the LORD had sealed as a covenant with the Israelites when they came out of the land of Egypt. 10And it happened when the priests came out of the Holy Place, that a cloud filled the house of the LORD. 11And the priests could not stand up to minister because of the cloud, for the LORD’s glory filled the house of the LORD. 12Then did Solomon say:
“The LORD meant to abide in thick fog.
13I indeed have built You a lofty house,
a firm place for Your dwelling forever.”
14And the king turned his face and blessed all the assembly of Israel with all the assembly of Israel standing. 15And he said: “Blessed is the LORD God of Israel Who spoke with His own mouth to David my father, and with His own hand has fulfilled it, saying, ‘16From the day that I brought out My people Israel from Egypt, I have not chosen a town from all the tribes of Israel to build a house for My name to be there, but I chose David to be over My people Israel.’ 17And it was in the heart of David my father to build a house for the name of the LORD God of Israel. 18And the LORD said to David my father, ‘Inasmuch as it was in your heart to build a house for My name, you have done well, for it was in your heart. 19Only you will not build the house, but your son, who issues from your loins, he will build the house for My name.’ 20And the LORD has fulfilled His word that He spoke, and I arose in place of David my father and sat on the throne of Israel as the LORD spoke and I have built the house for the name of the LORD God of Israel. 21And I have set there a place for the Ark in which is the covenant of the LORD that He sealed with our fathers when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.” 22And Solomon stood before the LORD’s altar over against all the assembly of Israel and spread his palms toward the heavens. 23And he said, “LORD God of Israel! There is no god like You in the heavens above and on the earth below, keeping the covenant and the kindness for Your servants who walk before You with all their heart, 24which You kept for David my father, what You spoke to him, and You spoke with Your own mouth, and with Your own hand You fulfilled it, as on this day. 25And now, LORD God of Israel, keep for Your servant David my father what You spoke to him, saying, ‘No man of yours will be cut off from before Me, sitting on the throne of Israel, if only your sons will keep their way to walk before Me as you have walked before Me.’ 26And now, God of Israel, may Your words, pray, be shown true that You spoke to David my father. 27But can God really dwell on earth? Look, the heavens and the heavens beyond the heavens cannot contain You. How much less this house that I have built. 28Yet turn to the prayer of Your servant and to his plea, LORD God of Israel, to hearken to the glad song and to the prayer that Your servant prays before You today, 29so that Your eyes be open to this house night and day, to this place of which You have said, ‘My name is there,’ to hearken to the prayer that Your servant prays in this place. 30And may You hearken to the plea of Your servant and of Your people Israel, which they will pray in this place, and may You hearken in Your dwelling place in the heavens, and hearken and forgive 31what a man offends against his fellow and bears an oath against him to bring a curse on him, and the oath comes before Your altar in this house. 32But You will hearken in the heavens and judge Your servant to condemn the guilty, to bring down his way on his head, and to vindicate him who is right, to mete out to him according to his righteousness. 33When Your people Israel are routed by an enemy, for they will offend You, and they come back to You and acclaim Your name and pray and plead to You in this house, 34You will hearken in the heavens and forgive the offense of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land that You gave to their fathers. 35When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain, for the Israelites will have offended against You, and they pray in this place and acclaim Your name, You shall forgive the offense of Your servants and turn back from their offense, for You will answer them. 36You will hearken in the heavens and forgive the offense of Your servants, Your people Israel, for You will teach them the good way in which they should walk, and You will give rain upon Your land that You have given to Your people in estate. 37Should there be famine in the land, should there be plague, blight, mildew, locusts, caterpillars, should his enemy besiege him in the gates of his land, any affliction, any disease, 38any prayer, any plea that any man have in all Your people Israel, that every man know his heart’s affliction, he shall spread out his palms in this house. 39And You shall hearken in the heavens, the firm place of Your dwelling, and You shall forgive and act and give to a man according to his ways, as You know his heart, for You alone know the heart of all men. 40So that they may fear You all the days that they live on the land that You gave to their fathers. 41And the foreigner, too, who is not from Your people Israel and has come from a distant land for the sake of Your name, 42if he hearkens to Your great name and Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm and comes and prays in this house, 43You will hearken in the heavens, the firm place of Your dwelling and do as all that the foreigner will call out to You, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name to fear You as does Your people Israel, to know that Your name has been called on this house that I have built. 44Should your people go out to battle against its enemy on the way that You send them, they shall pray to the LORD through the city that You have chosen and the house that I have built for Your name. 45And You shall hearken in the heavens to their prayer and to their plea, and You shall do justice for them. 46Should they offend against You, for there is no man who does not offend, and You are furious with them and give them to the enemy, and their captors take them off to a distant or nearby land, 47and they turn their heart back to You in the land in which they are captive, and turn back to You and plead with You in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have offended and have done wrong, we have been evil,’ 48and they turn back to You with all their heart and all their being in the land of their enemies who took them in captivity, and they pray to you through their land that You gave to their fathers, the city that You chose and the house that I have built for Your name, 49You shall hearken from the heavens, the firm place of Your dwelling, to their prayer and to their plea, and do justice for them. 50And You shall forgive Your people who have offended against you for all their crimes that they committed, and You shall grant them mercy before their captors, who will have mercy upon them. 51For they are Your people and Your estate that You brought out of the land of Egypt from the forge of iron. 52So that Your eyes be open to the plea of Your servant and the pleas of Your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they call to You. 53For You set them apart for You as an estate from all the peoples of the earth as You spoke through Moses Your servant when You brought out our fathers from Egypt, O Master LORD.” 54And it happened when Solomon finished praying to the LORD all this prayer and plea, that he rose from before the LORD’s altar from kneeling on his knees with his palms stretched out to the heavens. 55And he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel in a loud voice, saying: 56“Blessed is the LORD Who has granted to his people Israel as all that He spoke. Not a single thing has failed of all His good word that He spoke through Moses His servant. 57May the LORD our God be with us as He was with our Fathers. May He not forsake us and not abandon us, 58to incline our heart to Him to walk in all His ways and to keep His commands and His statutes and His laws with which He charged our fathers. 59And may these words that I pleaded before the LORD be near the LORD our God day and night to do justice for His servant and justice for His people Israel day after day, 60so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is our God, there is none else. 61And may your heart be whole with the LORD our God to walk in His statutes and to keep His commands as on this day.” 62And the king and all Israel with him were offering sacrifice before the LORD. 63And Solomon offered up the well-being sacrifices that he sacrificed to the LORD, twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred twenty thousand sheep. And the king and all the Israelites dedicated the house of the LORD. 64On that day the king sanctified the midst of the court that was before the house of the LORD, for he did there the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the well-being sacrifices. For the bronze altar that was before the LORD was too small to hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the well-being sacrifices. 65And at that time Solomon performed the festival and all Israel his people was with him, a great assembly from Lebo-Hamath to the Wadi of Egypt, seven days and seven days—fourteen days. 66On the seventh day he sent off the people, and they blessed the king and went to their tents, rejoicing and of good cheer over all the good that the LORD had done for David his servant and for Israel His people.
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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1. the City of David, which is Zion. Though part of Jerusalem, this area is distinct from the Temple mount, to its west. The Ark was kept here in a temporary structure (probably the Tent of Meeting) after David brought it up to Jerusalem (see 2 Samuel 6:12),
2. the month of Ethanim, which is the seventh month. Again, a nonstandard nomenclature for the months is used, necessitating the explanatory gloss. The seventh month would correspond approximately to October, and the festival celebrated on this occasion (see verse 65) is Succoth, which, because it was a seven-day festival at the end of the fall harvest, was of the three pilgrim festivals the one for which the greatest number of celebrants came to Jerusalem from all over the country. Solomon thus chooses wisely the time for dedicating the Temple.
7. its poles. The Ark was a portable structure, carried on poles.
9. as a covenant. These words are merely implied by the verb “sealed.”
11. the LORD’s glory filled the house. The manifestation of God’s glory, as is clear from a number of biblical texts, is a dense cloud. The ultimate source of this idea may be the poetic image of God, drawn from the Canaanite representation of Baal, as a dweller or rider of the clouds.
12. Then did Solomon say. This solemn declaration about where God abides is cast in a triadic line of poetry.
The LORD meant to abide in thick fog. What tradition—especially, poetic tradition—tells us of Him is that He abides in the clouds above.
13. I indeed have built You a lofty house. But with the erection of the Temple, a new era is inaugurated in which the God of Israel has an earthly abode.
a firm place for Your dwelling. This phrase, which will be repeated in Solomon’s lengthy address, occurs at the end of the Song of the Sea, Exodus 15:17.
15. to David my father. This weighted designation is reiterated throughout the speech: Solomon, consolidating his own rule through the construction of the Temple, repeatedly emphasizes that he is David’s son and sole heir and that God’s promises to his father are now fulfilled in him.
20. I arose in place of David my father. It should be recalled, as Solomon’s phrasing here invites us to recall, that he was designated by his father to assume the throne while his father was still alive.
for the name of the LORD. The Temple is understood to enhance the glory or reputation (“the name”) of the LORD.
21. in which is the covenant. The two stone tablets are conceived as the material equivalent of the covenant between God and Israel (see verse 9).
22. spread his palms toward the heavens. This conventional gesture of prayer is visible in many ancient Near Eastern statues and bas-reliefs.
23. LORD God of Israel. The first part of Solomon’s speech is an address to Israel in which he reminds the people that God’s promise to David is now fulfilled through his acts. At this point, he proceeds to voice a prayer to God.
There is no god like You in the heavens above and on the earth below. This wording may, like the Song of the Sea, reflects an older concept in which there are gods besides YHWH, but they are insubstantial and cannot compete with Him.
walk before You with all their heart. The language here is Deuteronomistic. The idiom “walk before” suggests entering into a relationship of devoted servitude.
27. can God really dwell on earth? Solomon now touches on a theological problem raised by the building of the Temple: it is figuratively and symbolically God’s dwelling place, but Solomon wants to deflect any literal notion that God actually abides in a human structure.
30. hearken to the plea of Your servant and of Your people. Throughout Solomon’s prayer, the emphasis is on the Temple as a place of prayer and supplication, a kind of terrestrial communications center for speaking with God. Sacrifice is not mentioned. It is possible, though not demonstrable, that the stress on prayer rather than sacrifice reflects some influence of the prophets, beginning with Isaiah in the late seventh century B.C.E. There are other features of Solomon’s speech that look late.
34. bring them back to the land. It is unlikely that the historical Solomon in the mid-tenth century B.C.E., at the very moment of his royal grandeur, with peace all around, should have introduced into his prayer, in the hearing of all Israel, this stark intimation of a future exile. The plausible inference is that the speech, or at the very least this part of it, was composed after the exile of the northern kingdom in 721 B.C.E. and perhaps even after the destruction of the southern kingdom in 586 B.C.E.
35. the Israelites. The Hebrew says simply “they,” but this implied antecedent is introduced in the translation to avoid the impression that it is the heavens that have offended.
37. Should there be famine in the land. This long run-on sentence—and there are more like it as the speech continues—is not typical of biblical prose style, although the Book of Deuteronomy exhibits a fondness for lengthy, periodic sentences, most of them more syntactically controlled that this one.
39. And You shall hearken in the heavens, the firm place of Your dwelling. This refrainlike clause picks up the previous notion that God does not actually dwell in the Temple but in the heavens above, from which He is disposed to listen to the prayers enunciated in the Temple because He regards it as a favored focal point for prayer.
41. And the foreigner, too. This sympathetic attitude toward the devoutness of foreigners who join the community of Israel sounds rather like a theme in Deutero-Isaiah, though one might argue that Solomon’s cordial relations, political, commercial, and marital, with surrounding nations might be reflected here.
44. through the city. Others understand the preposition as “in the direction of.”
46. their captors take them off. At this point, the prospect of exile becomes more explicit and emphatic.
47. We have offended and have done wrong, we have been evil. These words were incorporated in the short confession of sins in the Yom Kippur liturgy.
48. through their land. Again, the translation understands this to mean that they will invoke their land, though it could mean that they will turn in the direction of the land as they pray.
50. their captors, who will have mercy upon them. It is noteworthy that the defeat or humiliation of Israel’s enemies is not envisaged but rather the prospect that the captors will have compassion and treat them kindly. It is tempting to see in these words a reflection of Cyrus’s beneficence toward the exiled Israelites, but it is hard to know whether any of the speech could have been written that late.
56. Blessed is the LORD. This last part of Solomon’s quoted words, to the end of verse 61, is a kind of peroration that concludes his long address, appropriately invoking the divine promises to Moses and the importance of continuing loyalty to the covenant, framed once again in Deuteronomistic language.
63. twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred twenty thousand sheep. These imposing numbers are surely a fantastic embellishment of the actual ceremony.
65. from Lebo-Hamath. This town was at the border of Lebanon in the north.
seven days and seven days—fourteen days. The wording is a little confusing. The designated span of the pilgrim festival of Succoth was seven days. Solomon evidently doubled the time, adding a second week of celebration. But the report in the next verse that he sent the people home on the seventh day might suggest that he continued a more private celebration, perhaps involving only the royal house and priests, for the second week. Alternately, “he sent off the people on the seventh day” might mean the seventh day of the second week