2 Chronicles 7
Open in the reader1When Peace had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of He-Who-Is filled the temple.
2The priests were unable to enter the house of He-Who-Is, because the glory of He-Who-Is had filled it.
3When all the children of Strives-with-God saw the fire coming down and the glory of He-Who-Is above the temple, they bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to He-Who-Is: “For He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.”
4Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before He-Who-Is.
5And King Peace offered a sacrifice of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.
6The priests stood at their posts, as did the Joined-Ones with the musical instruments of He-Who-Is, which King Beloved had made for giving thanks to He-Who-Is and with which Beloved had offered praise, saying, “For His loving devotion endures forever.” Across from the Joined-Ones, the priests sounded trumpets, and all the children of Strives-with-God were standing.
7Then Peace consecrated the middle of the courtyard in front of the house of He-Who-Is, and there he offered the burnt offerings and the fat of the peace offerings, since the bronze altar he had made could not hold all these offerings.
8So at that time Peace and all Strives-with-God with him—a very great assembly of people from Entrance-of-hamath to the Brook of Two-Straits—kept the feast for seven days.
9On the eighth day they held a solemn assembly, for the dedication of the altar had lasted seven days, and the feast seven days more.
10On the twenty-third day of the seventh month, Peace sent the people away to their homes, joyful and glad of heart for the good things that He-Who-Is had done for Beloved, for Peace, and for His people Strives-with-God.
11When Peace had finished the house of He-Who-Is and the royal palace, successfully carrying out all that was in his heart to do for the house of He-Who-Is and for his own palace,
12He-Who-Is appeared to him at night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice.
13If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send a plague among My people,
14and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
15Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.
16For I have now chosen and consecrated this temple so that My Name may be there forever. My eyes and My heart will be there for all time.
17And as for you, if you walk before Me as your father Beloved walked, doing all I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and ordinances,
18then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with your father Beloved when I said, ‘You will never fail to have a man to rule over Strives-with-God.’
19But if you turn away and forsake the statutes and commandments I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods,
20then I will uproot Strives-with-God from the soil I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have devoted for My Name. I will make it an object of scorn and ridicule among all the peoples.
21And when this temple has become a heap of rubble, all who pass by it will be appalled and say, ‘Why has He-Who-Is done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’
22And others will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken He-Who-Is, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Two-Straits, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—because of this, He has brought all this disaster upon them.’”