Page:The Books of Chronicles (1916).djvu/262

198 hallowed this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually. And as for thee, if thou wilt walk before me as David thy father walked, and do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgements; then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom; according as I covenanted with David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man to be ruler in Israel. But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them: then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And this house, which is so high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall say, Why hath the done thus unto this land, and to this house? And they shall answer, Because they forsook the, the God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them. And it came to pass at the end of twenty years, wherein Solomon had built the house of the, and his own house, that the cities which Huram had given to Solomon,

16. for ever] Cp. xxx. 8.

21. which is so high] The Heb. must be rendered by a past tense, which was high—as though the speaker spoke from a later standpoint than the age of Solomon. That interpretation, however, is clumsy; and in all probability the reading in Chron. is simply an attempt to improve an erroneous text in Kings. There the original reading probably was "and this house shall become ruins; every one who passes by," etc.

22. they shall answer] Render, men shall say.

VIII. 1—6 (cp. 1 Kin. ix. 10, 11, 17—19).&emsp;

1. twenty years] Cp. 1 Kin. vi. 38, vii. 1.

2. the cities which Huram had given to Solomon] According to 1 Kin. ix. 12, 13 it was Solomon who gave Huram cities. Huram however was not pleased with them (ibid.), and from this fact the English translators