1 Raja-raja 8:29-30

8:29 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 

1 Raja-raja 8:35

8:35 “The time will come when ⁶  the skies are shut up tightly and no rain falls because your people ⁷  sinned against you. When they direct their prayers toward this place, renew their allegiance to you, ⁸  and turn away from their sin because you punish ⁹  them,

1 Raja-raja 8:38

8:38 When all your people Israel pray and ask for help, ¹⁰  as they acknowledge their pain ¹¹  and spread out their hands toward this temple,

[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.”

[8:35]  ⁶ tn Heb “when.” In the Hebrew text vv. 35-36a actually contain one lengthy conditional sentence, which the translation has divided into two sentences for stylistic reasons.

[8:35]  ⁷ tn Heb “they”; the referent (your people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:35]  ⁸ tn Heb “confess [or perhaps, “praise”] your name.”

[8:35]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew text has “because you answer them,” as if the verb is from עָנָה (’anah, “to answer”). However, this reference to a divine answer is premature, since the next verse asks for God to intervene in mercy. It is better to revocalize the consonantal text as תְעַנֵּם (tÿ’annem, “you afflict them”), a Piel verb form from the homonym עָנָה (“to afflict”).

[8:38]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “every prayer, every request for help which will be to all the people, to all your people Israel.”

[8:38]  ¹¹ tn Heb “which they know, each the pain of his heart.”