2 Chronicles 7:11–22 (NIV)✞: The LORD Appears to Solomon
In the last passage the Glory of the LORD filled the Temple, after which the Israelites offered sacrifices and held a festival to celebrate its opening.
After all of this is done—and, as verse 11✞ points out, after he’d also finished work on his palace, which I feel might be a subtle dig from the author(s) of Chronicles that Solomon’s loyalties weren’t perfect—God appears to Solomon again. (Remember that He already appeared to Solomon in Chapter 1.) I’ll go through God’s message to Solomon bit by bit.
First, God acknowledges Solomon’s prayer:
“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.
What interests me about this part of God’s message is the fact that He has chosen the Temple for the place where the Israelites are to make their sacrifices. Wasn’t that spot already chosen? Does this mean there was a chance God would have come and told Solomon and the Israelites to move the Temple somewhere else?
And, in a sense, of course God could do that—the Israelites are to do whatever He tells them to do, without question, just like I am—but I don’t think that’s what He means. I think He’s just affirming to Solomon that the prayer, the offerings, the festival, and everything else the Israelites did in dedicating the Temple were pleasing and acceptable to Him.
And what effect will this have? It means that God will be among His people, and hear them when they petition Him:
13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 16 I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.
Now… I’d expect that God would say something like, “I’ll bless my people but if they sin and repent I’ll hear and then forgive them,” which would harken back to the message He gave Moses in Deuteronomy, but He skips the first part starts immediately with, “I know you’re going to sin, but when you do, and I punish you, and you ask for forgiveness, I’ll forgive you.”
One could call this very pessimistic, but… having read the rest of the Old Testament, I think it’s simply a prophecy: this is how things are going to be. I think I said this in the last post too, but this dedication of the Temple is a high point in the Israelites’ relationship with God – which means that everything will be downhill from here!
They’ve had a very good king in David, who was intent on worshipping God; they now have a pretty good king in Solomon and a Temple where God Himself will dwell among them. But… pretty much immediately after this Solomon is going to start falling away from God—I know, it’s more complicated than that, and he’s not a terrible king, but… he’s also not living up to the standards set by his father—and after he dies the nation is going to split into Judah and Israel—the latter of which will never worship God properly, while the former will be, again, mixed in their devotion—and the nation will never again be like it was under King David, or like it is at this particular moment in time as the Temple is being dedicated.
The nation of Israel—and then the nations of Israel and Judah—are going to sin, and sin, and sin again, and the rest of the Old Testament is going to be a story of God having to choose, over and over again, whether to forgive them or not. And, in a sense, He will always forgive them, which leads to King Jesus – but, in another sense, the nation of Israel will cease to exist in a few hundred years and the nation of Judah will cease to exist a couple of hundred years after that.
But let’s get back to God’s message to Solomon…
Lest Solomon believe God is only talking generally about the nation, He has a specific message for Solomon, too.
17 “As for you, if you walk before me faithfully as David your father did, and do all I command, and observe my decrees and laws, 18 I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, ‘You shall never fail to have a successor to rule over Israel.’
And, as discussed—especially in Kings, though Chronicles isn’t going to dwell on Solomon’s faults as much—Solomon was mixed in his faithfulness, which didn’t immediately lead to him losing the throne, but it did lead to the line of David losing much of the nation immediately after Solomon’s reign.
Which is an important point: Solomon isn’t just a man, he’s also a king, so his sins have wider consequences than the sins of others:
19 “But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, 20 then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. 21 This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ 22 People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why he brought all this disaster on them.’”
As mentioned above, these prophecies are going to take hundreds of years to unfold fully, but the seeds will be sown pretty much immediately.
It’s very interesting to see God’s reasoning for all of this, though. Look at the last part again:
All who pass by will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why he brought all this disaster on them.’”
We might expect God to uphold and protect His people no matter what, as a message to the other nations: “Your ‘gods’ are nothing; I AM the only true God!” If God were to make the nation of Israel the strongest in the world it would show the world His power!
Except… firstly, it wouldn’t. The world would see Israel the same way they would see Assyria, or Babylon, or Persia, or Rome, or any other mighty nation: they’d see Israel as simply a mighty nation. There would be talk of gods, but I know of no case in history where a nation had one god, saw how powerful another nation was, and decided to switch to that nation’s god. That’s just the way the world works.
But secondly, and more importantly, God doesn’t have anything to prove to other gods or nations. It’s true, there have been numerous instances in the past where He made a point of defeating other nations to show them that their gods were nothing, but that’s only a side point. The main point is that God is to be worshipped; showing the other nations their gods are nothing would simply be petty, if there wasn’t a deeper message underneath it: “your gods aren’t real gods – therefore worship Me.”
And He is now predicting that, when Israel/Judah fall, it will be because He has a message to deliver to the nations: worship of Him is more important than everything else! Could He have kept the nation of Israel together, and mighty, forever? He already demonstrated He could, but He’s not interested in being the God of a mighty nation, He is interested in being the only God of a people who truly love and worship Him.
And let’s be clear: that’s exactly what happened! God let Israel, and then Judah, be conquered, just as He predicted He would. This eventually led to the coming of the Christ, who made the sacrifice nobody else was capable of making – leading, in turn, to a people who truly love God in Spirit and Truth.
In fact, we could ask: did anyone in any of the surrounding nations actually get the “message” God was sending when Israel and Judah were conquered? Did anyone from Assyria or Babylon or Egypt ever actually say to their friend that the LORD allowed Israel/Judah to be conquered because they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and because they had embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them? Perhaps not. But I’m sure the Jewish people did – and Christians, throughout the centuries, have also taken away the lesson that worship of God is more important than anything else—more important than having a mighty nation—and actually learned the lesson God was trying to teach.
So yes, God could have maintained Israel at all costs, despite their apostasy, but that petty impulse to prove Himself would have meant I’d never be saved, and have a right relationship with Him. He doesn’t feel He has to prove Himself to anyone – especially when He has a larger plan in mind, that leads to true worship of Him.
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