1When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from the heavens and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of Yahweh filled the house.
2And the priests were not able to enter the house of Yahweh, because the glory of Yahweh filled the house of Yahweh.
3All the sons of Israel were watching as the fire came down and the glory of Yahweh was upon the house, and they knelt with faces to the ground on the pavement, and they bowed down and gave thanks to Yahweh, ‘For he is good, for his loyal love is forever.’
4Then the king and all the people were sacrificing a sacrifice before Yahweh.
5King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty-two thousand cattle and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.
6And the priests were standing at their posts, and the Levites with the instruments of song for Yahweh which King David had made to give thanks to Yahweh—‘for his loyal love is forever’—when David offered praise by their hand; and the priests were sounding trumpets opposite them, while all Israel stood.
7Solomon consecrated the middle of the courtyard that was before the house of Yahweh, for there he made the burnt offerings and the fat portions of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar that Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat portions.
8So Solomon kept the feast at that time for seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great assembly, from Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt.
9On the eighth day they held a solemn assembly, for they had observed the dedication of the altar for seven days and the feast for seven days.
10On the twenty-third day of the seventh month he sent the people away to their tents, joyful and glad of heart over the good that Yahweh had done for David, for Solomon, and for Israel his people.
11So Solomon finished the house of Yahweh and the house of the king, and everything that came into Solomon’s heart to do in the house of Yahweh and in his own house he successfully carried out.
12Then Yahweh appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, ‘I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice.
13If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people,
14and my people, over whom my name is called, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, then I myself will hear from the heavens and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
15Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer of this place.
16For now I have chosen and consecrated this house, that my name may be there forever; and my eyes and my heart will be there for all the days.
17As for you, if you walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keep my statutes and my judgments,
18then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘A man to rule over Israel shall not be cut off from you.’
19But if you (plural) turn away and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them,
20then I will uproot them from my land which I have given to them, and this house which I have consecrated for my name I will cast away from my presence, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all the peoples.
21And this house, which was exalted, will become an object of appalled astonishment to everyone passing by it, and one will say, ‘Why has Yahweh done thus to this land and to this house?’
22And they will answer, ‘Because they forsook Yahweh, the God of their fathers, who brought them out from the land of Egypt, and laid hold of other gods and bowed down to them and served them—therefore he brought upon them all this disaster.’
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