1 Kings 8:60

1 Kings THE KING ‘BLESSING’ HIS PEOPLE1 Kings 8:54 - 1 Kings 8:63 . The great ceremonial of dedicating the Temple was threefold. The first stage was setting the ark in its place, which was the essence of the whole thing. God’s presence was the true dedication, and that was manifested by the bright cloud that filled the sanctuary as soon as the ark was placed there. The second stage was the lofty and spiritual prayer, saturated with the language and tone of Deuteronomy, and breathing the purest conceptions of the character and nature of God, and all aglow with trust in Him. Then followed, thirdly, this ‘Blessing of the Congregation.’ The prayer had been uttered by the kneeling king. Now he stands up, and, with ringing tones that reach to the outskirts of the crowd, he gathers the spirit of his prayer into two petitions, preceded by praise for national blessings, and followed by exhortation to national obedience. A huge sacrifice of unexampled magnitude closes the whole. I. Note the thankful retrospect of the nation’s past { 1 Kings 8:56 }. Solomon ‘blessed the congregation’ when, in their name, he lifted up his voice to bless the Lord, prayed that God would incline their hearts to keep His law, and would maintain their cause, and exhorted them to keep their hearts perfect with Him. We bless each other when we ask God to bless, and when we draw each other nearer Him.

Standing there in the new Temple, with a united nation gathered before him, the cloud filling the house, and peace resting on all his land to its farthest border, the king looks back on the long road from Sinai and the desert, and sums up the whole history in one sentence. The end has vindicated the methods. There had been many a dark time when enemies had oppressed, and many a hard-fought field had been stained with Israel’s blood; but all had tended to this calm hour, when Israel’s multitudes were gathered in worship, and their unguarded homes were safe. There had been many heroes in the long line. ‘Time would fail’ him ‘to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel . . . who . . . turned to flight armies of aliens.’ One name alone is worthy to be named,-the name of the true Deliverer and Monarch.

1 Kings 8:60 . That all the people of the earth may know that the Lord (Hebrew, Jehovah ) is God — That both by our virtuous and holy lives, to which his grace inclines us; and by the eminent manifestations of his power and goodness in defending and delivering us from the assaults and devices of our enemies, all the nations of the world may be convinced that our God is the living and true God, and he alone, and may thereupon be induced to renounce their idols and to serve him. For Solomon did not desire that Israel should be thus blessed, thus favoured, in order that all people might become tributaries to him and his successors, (his kingdom being already as great as he desired,) but that all people might know and worship Jehovah. Thus Solomon’s prayers, like the prayers of his father David, the son of Jesse, are ended, Psalm 72:19-20 , with this petition, Let the whole earth be filled with his glory. And “we cannot close our prayers,” says Henry, “with a better summary than this, Father, glorify thy name.”

60 . that all the people of the earth may know ] This was always the view of the pious Israelite that God’s glory might be known among all nations. Cf. Joshua 4:24 ; 1 Samuel 17:46 . There is nothing in 2 Chronicles of the 1 Kings 8:54-61 , but preceding the account of the sacrifices we are told ( 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 ) that fire came down from heaven (which Josephus also speaks of at this point of the narrative) and consumed the burnt-offering and the sacrifice, that the glory of God filled the house so that the priests could not enter, and that at the sight thereof all the people worshipped and praised the Lord. After this the narrative continues in parallelism with 1 Kings.