Place of prayer
1 Kings 8:1-61
Speeches, like songs, are tempting to skip over, but you don’t want to miss a word of today’s reading. In his brief speech to the people then his longer prayer of dedication, Solomon gives one of the best sermons on prayer you will ever read.
The Temple is, at its heart, a place of prayer. Even the sacrifices are in their way an acting out of prayers of adoration or contrition.
Verse 23, though centuries before Jesus, is the gospel in a nutshell. It’s the one I’ve quoted that begins by praising God then identifies him as “you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way.”
Isn’t that also the story of David?
Despite his wandering, his wholehearted devotion to God never wavered, and God certainly kept his covenant of love with him.
When Solomon looks at the Temple as a fitting home for God, he perceptively asks, “But will God really dwell on earth?” No, the heavens cannot contain God, much less the Temple.
But Solomon prays that God’s eyes will look toward the Temple day and night so that he may see the prayers people pray toward it—then lists the many kinds of prayers that God will hear through the Temple.
In Verses 41-43, Solomon anticipates another theme we tend to think of as belonging to the New Testament and asks God to hear the prayers of foreigners who pray toward the Temple, “so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you.”