1 Kings 8:31-53

(31) If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house: (32) Then hear thou in heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness. (33) When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house: (34) Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest unto their fathers. (35) When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them: (36) Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way wherein they should walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance. (37) If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be; (38) What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house: (39) Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men;) (40) That they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. (41) Moreover concerning a stranger, that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name's sake; (42) (For they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy stretched out arm;) when he shall come and pray toward this house; (43) Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for: that all people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy people Israel; and that they may know that this house, which I have builded, is called by thy name. (44) If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, whithersoever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the LORD toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have built for thy name: (45) Then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause. (46) If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not), and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near; (47) Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; (48) And so return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: (49) Then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause, (50) And forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them: (51) For they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron: (52) That thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them in all that they call for unto thee. (53) For thou didst separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord GOD.

After the petitions for general blessings, as they relate to redemption by the Lord Jesus, to the church at large; Solomon, in this part of his prayer, enters into the cases of a great variety of particular mercies, all to the same amount: resting wholly upon the covenant promises of God in Christ, of which this temple was a type. Solomon mentions the case of an appeal by oath, between one man and another, to determine right judgment; the parties looking towards the temple, by way of adjusting what was lawful: he mentions the case of public distresses, in national wars, or famine, or pestilence; or the shutting up of the heaven, and no rain given to bring forth the fruits of the earth: he mentions the case of private calamity, such as the distress of a man's soul, from a view of the plague of his own heart: he limits not these blessings to Israel, but, no doubt, led by the Holy Ghost to take in the Gentile church also, he includes the case of the stranger, brought to the Lord by the outward report of God's great name, and by the inward drawings of God's great love he adverts also to the case of war, and points out, that if the Lord's heritage, by reason of sin, should be given up for a time to the scourge of their enemies: on all these instances he dwells particularly. And in short, that Solomon might omit nothing in this earnest cry to God, for being heard by the Lord, by virtue of this temple building, beholding it as pointing to Jesus, and Jesus only; the king adds, in all that the people should call upon him for, his dwelling prayer that God would hear, from heaven his dwelling place, and both answer and forgive: And, as if still with an eye to Jesus the promised Seed, in whom, and with whom all blessings could alone be looked for; Solomon closes his prayer with that unanswerable argument for success, that the Lord God had separated his people from all nations: had made them his own; pledged himself to be their God, from the day he had brought them out of the land of Egypt, by Moses. Here, Reader! pause to remark with me, the ground work and foundation of success to all Solomon's petition. Not for desert; not for prayer; not for repentance; no, not for faith, in looking to Jesus, which this temple represented: for all these are the sweet fruits and effects of God's love; not the cause of that love. But it is wholly resulting from covenant grace, and covenant favor, founded and given to Israel, in Christ Jesus before the world began. This is the tenor of the Covenant; I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Even so, Father, is our Lord's own gracious conclusion upon it, and throws to the ground all impious and presumptuous reasoning's of men: Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. Exodus 33:19; Matthew 11:26.