1 ^tAs soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the king’s house and all that Solomon desired to build, 2 the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, ^uas he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 And the Lord said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by ^vputting my name there forever. My ^weyes and my heart will be there for all time. 4 And as for you, ^xif you will walk before me, ^yas David your father walked, ^zwith integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, 5 then I will ^aestablish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ^b‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’ 6 But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and ^cthe house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a ^dproverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 And this house will become a heap of ruins.¹ Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will ^ehiss, and they will say, ^f‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ 9 Then they will say, ‘Because they ^gabandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has ^hbrought all this disaster on them.’”