1 Kings 8:31-40

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

³¹ “If someone sins against a neighbor and is required to take an oath and comes and swears before your altar in this house,^{(A) 32} then hear in heaven, and act, and judge your servants, condemning the guilty by bringing their conduct on their own heads and vindicating the righteous by rewarding them according to their righteousness.^(B)

³³ “When your people Israel, having sinned against you, are defeated before an enemy but turn again to you, confess your name, pray and plead with you in this house,^{(C) 34} then hear in heaven, forgive the sin of your people Israel, and bring them again to the land that you gave to their ancestors.

³⁵ “When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you and then they pray toward this place, confess your name, and turn from their sin because you punish^[a] them,^{(D) 36} then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk, and grant rain on your land, which you have given to your people as an inheritance.^(E)

³⁷ “If there is famine in the land, if there is plague, blight, mildew, locust, or caterpillar; if their enemy besieges them in any^[b] of their cities; whatever suffering, whatever sickness there is;^{(F) 38} whatever prayer, whatever plea there is from any individual or from all your people Israel, all knowing the suffering of their own hearts so that they stretch out their hands toward this house; ³⁹ then hear in heaven your dwelling place, forgive, act, and render to all whose hearts you know—according to all their ways, for only you know the human heart^(G)— ⁴⁰ so that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our ancestors.^(H)