¹And when Solomon had finished praying, a fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the house. ²And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. ³And all the sons of Israel saw when the fire came down and the glory of the Lord was over the house, and they bowed face down to the ground on the pavement, and they worshipped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying,

“For he is good,

For his kindness is age-abiding.”

⁴And the king and all the people offered a sacrifice before the Lord. ⁵And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep. And the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. ⁶And the priests were standing at their guard posts, and the Levites were standing with instruments of music to the Lord which King David had made, to give thanks to the Lord, for his kindness is age-abiding, when David gave praise by means of them, and the priests blew trumpets before them, and all Israel stood. ⁷And Solomon sanctified the inside of the court which was in front of the house of the Lord, for it is there that he made the burnt offerings and offered the fat of the peace-offerings, because the copper altar which Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the meal-offering and the fat-offerings. ⁸And Solomon celebrated the festival at that time for seven days, as did all Israel with him – a very large convocation from the approach to Hamath to the Brook of Egypt. ⁹And on the eighth day he held a solemn assembly, for they had conducted the dedication of the altar for seven days, and the festival had been for seven days. ¹⁰And on the twenty-third day of the seventh month, he sent the people to their tents, happy and in good spirits because of the good which the Lord had done to David and to Solomon and to Israel his people. ¹¹So Solomon completed the house of the Lord and the king's house, and he was successful with everything that came into Solomon's heart to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house. ¹²And the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night, and he said to him, “I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for myself to be a house of sacrifice. ¹³If I shut heaven so that there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send a pestilence on my people, ¹⁴and my people on whom my name is called humble themselves, and they pray, and they seek my face, and they turn back from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land. ¹⁵Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to a prayer from this place. ¹⁶And now I have chosen and I have sanctified this house for my name to be there age-abidingly, and my eyes and my heart will be there continually. ¹⁷And as for you, if you walk before me as David your father walked, in doing everything that I have commanded you, and if you keep my statutes and my regulations, ¹⁸then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, ‘No man of your line ruling in Israel will be cut off.’ ¹⁹But if you turn away and abandon my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and you go your way and serve other gods and worship them, ²⁰then I will pluck them up from my land which I have given them, and I will cast this house which I have sanctified for my name out of my sight, and I will make it the subject of taunting and jeering among all the nations. ²¹And this house which will have been exalted, will be a cause of astonishment to everyone passing by it, and a man will say, ‘Why has the Lord done this to this land and to this house?’ ²²And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they adhered to other gods and worshipped them and served them – that is why he has brought all this trouble on them.’ ”