1 Kings 8:33,34

When thy people. — From the individual, the prayer turns to those which touch the whole nation. It pictures various national calamities, and in each recognises not mere evils, but chastisements of God, who desires by them to teach, and is most ready to forgive. First it naturally dwells on disaster in battle, which, in the whole history of the Exodus, of the Conquest, of the troubled age of the Judges, and of the reigns of Saul and David, is acknowledged as a sign of unfaithfulness in Israel, either through sin or through idolatry, to the covenant of God, on which the victorious possession of the promised land depended. On that history the blessing and the curse of the Law (Leviticus 26:17; Leviticus 26:32; Deuteronomy 28:25) form a commentary of emphatic warning, and the Psalms again and again bring the same lesson home (Psalms 44:1; Psalms 44:9; Psalms 60:9; Psalms 89:42). With characteristic seriousness, Solomon looks back from his peaceful prosperity on the stormy past, and from it learns to pray for the future.