42 (For they will have news of your great name and your strong hand and your out-stretched arm;) when he comes to make his prayer, turning to this house:
O Lord God, you have now for the first time let your servant see your great power and the strength of your hand; for what god is there in heaven or on earth able to do such great works and such acts of power?
Yours is an arm of power; strong is your hand and high your right hand.
And it will come about that everyone who is still living, of all those nations who came against Jerusalem, will go up from year to year to give worship to the King, the Lord of armies, and to keep the feast of tents.
Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, give worship and praise and honour to the King of heaven; for all his works are true and his ways are right: and those who go in pride he is able to make low.
Nebuchadnezzar made answer and said, Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who has sent his angel and kept his servants safe who had faith in him, and who put the king's word on one side and gave up their bodies to the fire, so that they might not be servants or worshippers of any other god but their God.
And the king made answer to Daniel and said, Truly, your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings, and an unveiler of secrets, for you have been able to make this secret clear.
And I was acting for the honour of my name, so that it might not be made unclean before the eyes of the nations among whom they were, and before whose eyes I gave them knowledge of myself, by taking them out of the land of Egypt.
For the Lord has given a price for Jacob, and made him free from the hands of him who was stronger than he.
But I said, How am I to put you among the children, and give you a desired land, a heritage of glory among the armies of the nations? and I said, You are to say to me, My father; and not be turned away from me.
And I will put a sign among them, and I will send those who are still living to the nations, to Tarshish, Put, and Lud, Meshech and Rosh, Tubal and Javan, to the sea-lands far away, who have not had word of me, or seen my glory; and they will give the knowledge of my glory to the nations. And they will take your countrymen out of all the nations for an offering to the Lord, on horses, and in carriages, and in carts, and on asses, and on camels, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, as the children of Israel take their offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord.
He who made the arm of his glory go at the right hand of Moses, by whom the waters were parted before them, to make himself an eternal name;
Awake! awake! put on strength, O arm of the Lord, awake! as in the old days, in the generations long past. Was it not by you that Rahab was cut in two, and the dragon Wounded?
And Moses said to God, When I come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you: and they say to me, What is his name? what am I to say to them? And God said to him, I AM WHAT I AM: and he said, Say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you. And God went on to say to Moses, Say to the children of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my name for ever, and this is my sign to all generations. Go and get together the chiefs of the children of Israel, and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has been seen by me, and has said, Truly I have taken up your cause, because of what is done to you in Egypt;
There is no god like you, O Lord; there are no works like your works. Let all the nations whom you have made come and give worship to you, O Lord, giving glory to your name.
But the Lord, who took you out of the land of Egypt with his great power and his outstretched arm, he is your God, to whom you are to give worship and make offerings:
And they said to him, Your servants have come from a very far country, because of the name of the Lord your God: for the story of his great name, and of all he did in Egypt has come to our ears, And what he did to the two kings of the Amorites east of Jordan, to Sihon, king of Heshbon, and to Og, king of Bashan, at Ashtaroth.
For we have had news of how the Lord made the Red Sea dry before you when you came out of Egypt; and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites, on the other side of Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you gave up to the curse. And because of this news, our hearts became like water, and there was no more spirit in any of us because of you; for the Lord your God is God in heaven on high and here on earth.
And be certain in your minds this day; for these words are not said to your children, who have had no experience of the training of the Lord your God, and who have not seen his great power or his strong hand and his stretched-out arm, Or his signs and wonders which he did in Egypt, to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and all his land;
Has God ever before taken a nation for himself from out of another nation, by punishments and signs and wonders, by war and by a strong hand and a stretched-out arm and great acts of wonder and fear, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes?
So keep these laws and do them; for so will your wisdom and good sense be clear in the eyes of the peoples, who hearing all these laws will say, Truly, this great nation is a wise and far-seeing people.
And the Lord came down in the cloud and took his place by the side of Moses, and Moses gave worship to the name of the Lord. And the Lord went past before his eyes, saying, The Lord, the Lord, a God full of pity and grace, slow to wrath and great in mercy and faith; Having mercy on thousands, overlooking evil and wrongdoing and sin; he will not let wrongdoers go free, but will send punishment on children for the sins of their fathers, and on their children's children to the third and fourth generation.
And when your son says to you in time to come, What is the reason for this? say to him, By the strength of his hand the Lord took us out of Egypt, out of the prison-house:
For if I had put the full weight of my hand on you and your people, you would have been cut off from the earth:
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 1 Kings 8
Commentary on 1 Kings 8 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 8
The building and furniture of the temple were very glorious, but the dedication of it exceeds in glory as much as prayer and praise, the work of saints, exceed the casting of metal and the graving of stones, the work of the craftsman. The temple was designed for the keeping up of the correspondence between God and his people; and here we have an account of the solemnity of their first meeting there.
1Ki 8:1-11
The temple, though richly beautified, yet while it was without the ark was like a body without a soul, or a candlestick without a candle, or (to speak more properly) a house without an inhabitant. All the cost and pains bestowed on this stately structure are lost if God do not accept them; and, unless he please to own it as the place where he will record his name, it is after all but a ruinous heap. When therefore all the work is ended (ch. 7:51), the one thing needful is yet behind, and that is the bringing in of the ark. This therefore is the end which must crown the work, and which here we have an account of the doing of with great solemnity.
1Ki 8:12-21
Here,
1Ki 8:22-53
Solomon having made a general surrender of this house to God, which God had signified his acceptance of by taking possession, next follows Solomon's prayer, in which he makes a more particular declaration of the uses of that surrender, with all humility and reverence, desiring that God would agree thereto. In short, it is his request that this temple may be deemed and taken, not only for a house of sacrifice (no mention is made of that in all this prayer, that was taken for granted), but a house of prayer for all people; and herein it was a type of the gospel church; see Isa. 56:7, compared with Mt. 21:13. Therefore Solomon opened this house, not only with an extraordinary sacrifice, but with an extraordinary prayer.
1Ki 8:54-61
Solomon, after his sermon in Ecclesiastes, gives us the conclusion of the whole matter; so he does here, after this long prayer; it is called his blessing the people, v. 55. He pronounced it standing, that he might be the better heard, and because he blessed as one having authority. Never were words more fitly spoken, nor more pertinently. Never was congregation dismissed with that which was more likely to affect them and abide with them.
1Ki 8:62-66
We read before that Judah and Israel were eating and drinking, and very cheerful under their own vines and fig-trees; here we have them so in God's courts. Now they found Solomon's words true concerning Wisdom's ways, that they are ways of pleasantness.