Promises of Judgment; 1 Kings 8:25-30
We have come to the fourth
request. 1 Kings 8:37 NASB “If there is famine in the land, if
there is pestilence, if there is blight {or} mildew, locust {or} grasshopper,
if their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities, whatever plague,
whatever sickness {there is,} [38] whatever prayer or supplication is made by any
man {or} by all Your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own
heart, and spreading his hands toward this house; [39] then hear
in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive and act and render to each according
to all his ways, whose heart You know, for You alone know the hearts of all the
sons of men, [40] that they may fear You all the days that they
live in the land which You have given to our fathers.”
This is an allusion to two
passages in Leviticus 26. Verse 16 which is in the first cycle of discipline: NASB
“I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror,
consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine
away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up.”
There is the idea of foreign invasion. Verse 25 NASB “I will also
bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant; and when
you gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you, so that
you shall be delivered into enemy hands.” This is all part of the backdrop for
understanding this type of discipline. Then we could also go to Deuteronomy
28:21, 22, 25, 38 NASB “The LORD will make the pestilence cling to you until He has
consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it. The LORD will smite
you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat
and with the sword and with blight and with mildew [disease that would affect
the crops], and they will pursue you until you perish…. The LORD shall cause
you to be defeated before your enemies; you will go out one way against them,
but you will flee seven ways before them, and you will be {an example of}
terror to all the kingdoms of the earth…. You shall bring out much seed to the
field but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it.”
As Solomon prays he is
thinking through these passages and he is summarising all of the different ways
God is going to bring judgment on the people for disobedience—famine, disease,
plague, various diseases that affect the crops, the locusts, military defeat. Then
he says, “whatever prayer or supplication is made by
any man.” The emphasis always goes from man’s failure and God’s judgments to
grace. This whole prayer is an appeal to the grace of God which is part of His
promise to forgive them; that despite their disobedience, their rebellion, all
of their idolatry, always there is a way of salvation and a way of deliverance.
So no matter what happens in our lives, no matter what sin or failures there
are, the principle is that God always has a gracious provision for us so that
we can recover, and after we confess our sin and return to Him God then can
bless us and restore us.
The fifth request focuses on
the stranger in Israel, the foreigner who is living in the land. This is very important to
understand because Israel is the land that God gave to Israel. Under the Mosaic Law there is no inheritance and no
possession in the land for the non-Jew, for the foreigner. That doesn’t mean
that they can’t live there, that they are not protected by the Law; they can
live there and are protected by the Law and can experience a measure of
blessing but they can’t enter into ownership and inheritance because they are
not of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They are treated fairly and
with grace and according to the Law, they are not demeaned but they can’t have the
same level of ownership and inheritance rights as the Jews—unless they marry,
unless they become a convert and a proselyte as, for example, Rahab and Ruth.
1 Kings 8:41 NASB “Also concerning the foreigner
who is not of Your people Israel, when he comes from a far country for Your name’s
sake.” So this is a Gentile believer on the Old Testament coming from anywhere
outside of the land, an Old Testament believer but not a Jew. Then there is a
parenthetical explanation. 1 Kings 8:42 NASB “(for they will hear of
Your great name and Your mighty hand, and of Your
outstretched arm); when he comes and prays toward this house.” The reputation
of Israel’s God had gone out throughout the ancient world. The
idea of the reputation of Israel’s God going throughout the Gentile world was not
unusual and it is backed up by episodes in the Scriptures. Solomon refers to
this and says that when these Gentiles from distant countries “come here,” and
we are going to see one in Solomon’s very own lifetime as the Queen of Sheba
will be one of these Gentiles who will hear about God, hear of the reputation
of Solomon, and will travel from her country to Jerusalem in order to see the splendours
of Solomon’s empire and to learn about God. Much of what Solomon says is a
foreshadowing of what will take place in the rest of Kings. When the Gentile
believer comes and prays at the temple Solomon says [43] hear in heaven Your
dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You,
in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, to fear You, as
{do} Your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have
built is called by Your name.” So here we see the outworking again of the Abrahamic
covenant. Gentiles are blessed by association with Israel, and when Gentiles come to the temple they would have
their prayer answered as well because they are believers and can come before
God on the basis of the Abrahamic covenant. “…that all the peoples of the earth
may know Your name” emphasises a principle in prayer, that one of the reasons
we call upon God to act in our lives and in the lives others is for the sake of
His reputation and that His Word [gospel] will go out to be heard by those who
don’t know it. This is the beginning of wisdom—to fear God. It is more than
respect; it is a healthy respect, a sense of also fear of the consequences of
disobedience. The prayer is theocentric. He is calling upon God not because of
what it is going to do for him or the Gentile but because of the way it will
enhance God’s reputation among people. He is concerned about the influence of
the gospel and the truth among all of mankind. So he is focused on the
reputation of God.
The sixth petition is in
verses 44 and 45. “When Your people go out to battle
against their enemy, by whatever way You shall send them, and they pray to the LORD toward the
city which You have chosen and the house which I have built for Your name,
then hear in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their
cause.” So the situation is when Israel is going into battle in a just war that God would
listen to their prayer and would give them victory in the battle. The
prerequisite for this is that Israel would not be in a position of disobedience which
would call for defeat in that situation, but that it would be a situation where
they would be obedient to God and that God would be protecting them from their
enemies as was promised in the Law.
The seventh and last
petition again turns to the scene of sin and discipline, God’s judgment on them.
The backdrop to this is Leviticus 26:27-35 NASB “Yet if in spite of
this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I
will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you
seven times for your sins. Further,
you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters you will
eat. I then will destroy
your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and heap your remains on
the remains of your idols, for My soul shall abhor you.
I will lay waste your cities as well and will
make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas.
I will make the land desolate so that your
enemies who settle in it will be appalled over it. You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will
draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities
become waste. Then the land
will enjoy its sabbaths all
the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land
will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.
All the days of {its} desolation it will observe
the rest which it did not observe on your sabbaths,
while you were living on it.”
It goes on to explain in
verses 36-38 “As for those of you who may be left [alive], I will also bring
weakness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. And the sound of a
driven leaf will chase them, and even when no one is pursuing they will flee as
though from the sword, and they will fall. They will therefore stumble over each other as if
{running} from the sword, although no one is pursuing; and you will have {no
strength} to stand up before your enemies. But you will perish among the
nations, and your enemies’ land will consume you.” This is the promise of
divine discipline.
1 Kings 8:46 NASB
“When they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin) and You are
angry with them and deliver them to an enemy, so that they take them away
captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near; [47] if they take thought in
the land where they have been taken captive, and repent and make supplication
to You in the land of those who have taken them captive, saying, ‘We have
sinned and have committed iniquity, we have acted wickedly.” One thing we want
to note is the basis for divine judgment. Again and again as we go through both
the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament we come across terminology
related to God’s judgment. We see this in revelation where we use the term “anger”
and we use the term “wrath.” When most people see those terms they think in
terms of human emotion, in terms of God’s witnessing disobedience in a sort of
real time scenario and then God gets mad at Israel or at believers because of
what they do, and so out of anger God judges. But this doesn’t fit a sound
understanding of the character of God. God does not judge out of emotion; God
does not discipline out of emotion; God judges from the basis of His legal
contracts and brings discipline on the basis of His character. He is slow to
bring discipline and He is slow to bring judgment and is constantly extending
grace to the sinner. One of the things that is brought
out in these kinds of passages is demonstrated in this word that is translated “anger.”
These kinds of words are anthropopathisms, where
human emotions are ascribed to God and He doesn’t possess those emotions but
they are used that way in order to give man a point of contact or comparison in
order to better understand the plans and policies of God. What is behind all of
the idioms is not to say that God is losing His temper or that he gets all
emotional because man is disobedient. You never want a judge to execute
judgment from emotion but rather from a position of objectivity and integrity.
Once they are captive,
verse 47 describes what happens after they have been disciplined. 1 Kings 8:47 NASB
“if they take thought in the land where they have been taken captive, and
repent and make supplication to You in the land of those who have taken them
captive, saying, ‘We have sinned and have committed iniquity, we have acted
wickedly’.” This is their confession. They admit their sin and how they have
violated the Law and have acted wickedly. So the petition is expressed through
the “if” clause. [48] “if they return to You with all their heart and with all
their soul in the land of their enemies who have taken them captive, and pray
to You toward their land which You have given to their fathers, the city which
You have chosen, and the house which I have built for Your name; [49] then hear
their prayer and their supplication in heaven Your dwelling place, and maintain
their cause, [50] and forgive Your people who have sinned against You and all
their transgressions which they have transgressed against You, and make them
{objects of} compassion before those who have taken them captive, that they may
have compassion on them.” This is what happened when Cyrus issued a decree in
538 BC.
[51] “(for they are Your people and Your inheritance
which You have brought forth from Egypt, from the midst of the iron furnace), [52] that Your
eyes may be open to the supplication of Your servant and to the supplication of
Your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they call to You.”
A parallel passage for
this is found in Deuteronomy 28:36, 37 which talks about the judgment of God
and His discipline. But in Deuteronomy 28:49ff NASB “Deut 28:49 “The
LORD
will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the
eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand” – this is
the backdrop for Isaiah 28 where the Jews are warned of divine discipline and they
would hear a foreign language in the streets of Jerusalem. That is picked up in
the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 14 when the apostle Paul is talking about
the gift of languages and that one of the purpose for the gift of tongues was
that when the Jews would hear Gentile languages in Jerusalem it would be a sign
of impending judgment. [50] “a nation of fierce
countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor
to the young.” So there is a long description here down to the end of the
chapter as to how God is going to bring discipline upon Israel.
Deuteronomy 28:62 NASB
“Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the
stars of heaven, because you did not obey the LORD your God.” That will be
fulfilled at the end of the Tribulation period. At least half of the Jews who
are alive at the beginning of the Tribulation will die during the Tribulation. [63]
“It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you,
so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will
be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it.”
Then God’s grace is
mentioned in verse 68 NASB “The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, ‘You
will never see it again!’ And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your
enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.” Then in chapter
29 there is the promise of the land again restated and how God is going to give
them the land, and in chapter 30:5 there is the
promise of restoration. NASB “The LORD your God will bring you into
the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will
prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.” This is also the first
hint of the New covenant: how the Lord will change
them from the inside.
So in the seventh petition
there is an emphasis on the forgiveness of God and his ultimate restoration of
the people.
So that brings us to the
conclusion of the prayer and his benediction on the temple which begins in 1
Kings 8:54 NASB “When Solomon had finished praying this
entire prayer and supplication to the LORD, he arose from before the altar of the LORD, from
kneeling on his knees with his hands spread toward heaven. [55] And
he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying:
[56] ‘Blessed be the LORD, who has given rest to His people Israel, according
to all that He promised; not one word has failed of all His good promise, which
He promised through Moses His servant’.” So He has already fulfilled promises
to David, to Moses, to Abraham, and because he has fulfilled these promises
literally we know that the other promises that are made in Leviticus 26, 27 and
Deuteronomy that these promises will also be fulfilled literally. Not one word
has failed of all of His good promise. We can all count on God to fulfil His
Word. His promises will not be broken and His promises will not b3e made in vain.
1 Kings 8:57 NASB
“May the LORD our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may
He not leave us or forsake us, [58] that He may incline our hearts
to Himself, to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and His
statutes and His ordinances, which He commanded our fathers.
[59] And may these words of mine, with which I
have made supplication before the LORD, be near to the LORD our God day and night, that He may maintain the cause
of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day requires.” These two verses emphasise
volition and the personal responsibility side on the part of Israel. On the one hand Solomon knows that Moses has
prophesied and God has promised that the people would eventually be
disobedient, that they would not walk with God, that God would discipline them
and take them out of the land, but that God in His grace would forgive them
when they turned back to Him and restore them to the land. Nevertheless, even
though he knows that that is going to happen he still prays for what they
should do, because they have volition and they have personal responsibility. And
it is not a fatalism because God has said this will
happen, it doesn’t mean that it will happen in this generation or to them, so
there is constant prayer that this generation and these people will be obedient
to God and will keep His commandment and His ways and be faithful to Him. [6] “so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God;
there is no one else.” Notice, again everything is oriented ultimately to God’s
reputation and God’s character.
In conclusion in v. 61 he
says: “Let your heart therefore be wholly devoted to the LORD our God, to
walk in His statutes and to keep His commandments, as at this day.” So the
prayer also functions as a reminder to the people and warning of future
disobedience and divine judgment which should challenge them to make sure that
they walk in obedience before the Lord.
1 Kings 8:62 NASB “Now
the king and all Israel with him offered sacrifice before the LORD. [63] Solomon
offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to the LORD, 22,000
oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the sons of Israel dedicated the house of the LORD.” Imagine
the blood! This is to remind us of the horror of sin and the horror of the kind
of death that is required to pay for sin. All of these sacrifices are very
unpleasant. [64] “On the same day the king consecrated the middle of the court
that {was} before the house of the LORD, because there he offered the burnt offering and the
grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings; for the bronze altar that
{was} before the LORD {was} too small to hold the burnt offering and the
grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings. [65] “So
Solomon observed the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of Egypt, before the LORD our God,
for seven days and seven {more} days, {even} fourteen days. [66] On
the eighth day he sent the people away and they blessed the king. Then they
went to their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the LORD
had shown to David His servant and to Israel His people.” The entrance of Hamath
to the brook of Egypt defines the land that is under the control of Israel at that time, and the people came from throughout the
land in order to celebrate this feast for two weeks.
This marks the high water
mark of Solomon’s reign. From this point on he succumbs to apostasy gradually
and falls away from God.