II Chronicles 6:26
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When the skies are shut and there is no rain because Your people have sinned against You, and they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and they turn from their sins because You have afflicted them,
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
The words with which Solomon celebrates this wondrous evidence of the divine favour, entirely coincide with the narrative in Kg1 8:12-21, except that in Ch2 6:5. the actual words of Solomon's speech are more completely given than in Kg1 8:16, where the words, "and I have not chosen a man to be prince over my people Israel, and I have chosen Jerusalem that my name might be there," are omitted. For the commentary on this address, see on Kg1 8:12-21.
Open source ↗The glory of the Lord, in the vehicle of a thick cloud, having filled the house which Solomon built, by which God manifested his presence there, he immediately improves the opportunity, and addresses God, as a God now, in a peculiar manner, nigh at hand. I. He makes a solemn declaration of his intention in building this house, to the satisfaction of the people and the honour of God, both of whom he blessed (Ch2 6:1-11). II. He makes a solemn prayer to God that he would please graciously to accept and answer all the prayers that should be made in, or towards, that house (v. 12-42). This whole chapter we had before, with very little variation (1 Kings 8:12-53), to which it may not be amiss here to look back.
Open source ↗6:26-27 Petition 3: Solomon asked that God would guide his people to follow the right path so that sin would not prevent God’s blessing of rain for the land.
Open source ↗Cross-references
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I will break down your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze,
or the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you. He will shut the heavens so that there will be no rain, nor will the land yield its produce, and you will soon perish from the good land that the LORD is giving you.
The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.
I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.”
These witnesses have power to shut the sky so that no rain will fall during the days of their prophecy, and power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they wish.
He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.
“Son of man, if a land sins against Me by acting unfaithfully, and I stretch out My hand against it to cut off its supply of food, to send famine upon it, and to cut off from it both man and beast,
But I tell you truthfully that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and great famine swept over all the land.