7 ^1-2 As Solomon finished praying, fire flashed down from heaven and burned up the sacrifices! And the glory of the Lord filled the Temple, so that the priests couldn’t enter! ³ All the people had been watching, and now they fell flat on the pavement and worshiped and thanked the Lord.

“How good he is!” they exclaimed. “He is always so loving and kind.”

^4-5 Then the king and all the people dedicated the Temple by sacrificing burnt offerings to the Lord. King Solomon’s contribution for this purpose was 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. ⁶ The priests were standing at their posts of duty, and the Levites were playing their thanksgiving song, “His Loving-Kindness Is Forever,” using the musical instruments King David himself had made and had used to praise the Lord. Then, when the priests blew the trumpets, all the people stood again. ⁷ Solomon consecrated the inner court of the Temple for use that day as a place of sacrifice because there were too many sacrifices for the bronze altar to accommodate.

⁸ For the next seven days they celebrated the Tabernacle Festival, with large crowds coming in from all over Israel; they arrived from as far away as Hamath at one end of the country to the brook of Egypt at the other. ⁹ A final religious service was held on the eighth day. ¹⁰ Then on October 7 he sent the people home, joyful and happy because the Lord had been so good to David and Solomon and to his people Israel.

¹¹ So Solomon finished building the Temple as well as his own palace. He completed what he had planned to do.

¹² One night the Lord appeared to Solomon and told him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this Temple as the place where I want you to sacrifice to me. ¹³ If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust swarms to eat up all of your crops, or if I send an epidemic among you, ¹⁴ then if my people will humble themselves and pray, and search for me, and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear them from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land. ¹⁵ I will listen, wide awake, to every prayer made in this place. ¹⁶ For I have chosen this Temple and sanctified it to be my home forever; my eyes and my heart shall always be here.

¹⁷ “As for yourself, if you follow me as your father David did, ¹⁸ then I will see to it that you and your descendants will always be the kings of Israel; ¹⁹ but if you don’t follow me, if you refuse the laws I have given you and worship idols, ²⁰ then I will destroy my people from this land of mine that I have given them, and this Temple shall be destroyed even though I have sanctified it for myself. Instead, I will make it a public horror and disgrace. ²¹ Instead of its being famous, all who pass by will be incredulous.

“‘Why has the Lord done such a terrible thing to this land and to this Temple?’ they will ask.

²² “And the answer will be, ‘Because his people abandoned the Lord God of their fathers, the God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead. That is why he has done all this to them.’”