Discovery Box1 Kings 8:29-32
Context8:29 Night and day may you watch over this temple, the place where you promised you would live. 1 May you answer your servant’s prayer for this place. 2 8:30 Respond to the request of your servant and your people Israel for this place. 3 Hear from inside your heavenly dwelling place 4 and respond favorably. 5
8:31 “When someone is accused of sinning against his neighbor and the latter pronounces a curse on the alleged offender before your altar in this temple, be willing to forgive the accused if the accusation is false. 6 8:32 Listen from heaven and make a just decision about your servants’ claims. Condemn the guilty party, declare the other innocent, and give both of them what they deserve. 7
[8:29] 1 tn Heb “so your eyes might be open toward this house night and day, toward the place about which you said, ‘My name will be there.’”
[8:29] 2 tn Heb “by listening to the prayer which your servant is praying concerning this place.”
[8:30] 3 tn Heb “listen to the request of your servant and your people Israel which they are praying concerning this place.”
[8:30] 4 tn Heb “and you, hear inside your dwelling place, inside heaven.” The precise nuance of the preposition אֶל (’el), used here with the verb “hear,” is unclear. One expects the preposition “from,” which appears in the parallel text in 2 Chr 6:21. The nuance “inside; among” is attested for אֶל (see Gen 23:19; 1 Sam 10:22; Jer 4:3), but in each case a verb of motion is employed with the preposition, unlike 1 Kgs 8:30. The translation above (“from inside”) is based on the demands of the immediate context rather than attested usage elsewhere.
[8:30] 5 tn Heb “hear and forgive.”
[8:31] 5 tn Heb “and forgive the man who sins against his neighbor when one takes up against him a curse to curse him and the curse comes before your altar in this house.” In the Hebrew text the words “and forgive” conclude v. 30, but the accusative sign at the beginning of v. 31 suggests the verb actually goes with what follows in v. 31. The parallel text in 2 Chr 6:22 begins with “and if,” rather than the accusative sign. In this case “forgive” must be taken with what precedes, and v. 31 must be taken as the protasis (“if” clause) of a conditional sentence, with v. 32 being the apodosis (“then” clause) that completes the sentence.
[8:32] 7 tn Heb “and you, hear [from] heaven and act and judge your servants by declaring the guilty to be guilty, to give his way on his head, and to declare the innocent to be innocent, to give to him according to his innocence.”
