7. Solomon consecrated the middle of the courtyard that is in front of the Lord’s temple. He offered burnt sacrifices, grain offerings, and the fat from the peace offerings there, because the bronze altar that Solomon had made was too small to hold all these offerings.
8. At that time Solomon and all Israel with him celebrated a festival for seven days. This great assembly included people from Lebo Hamath in the north to the Brook of Egypt in the south.
9. On the eighth day they held an assembly, for they had dedicated the altar for seven days and celebrated the festival for seven more days.
10. On the twenty-third day of the seventh month, Solomon sent the people home. They left happy and contented because of the good the Lord had done for David, Solomon, and his people Israel.
11. After Solomon finished building the Lord’s temple and the royal palace, and accomplished all his plans for the Lord’s temple and his royal palace,
12. the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him: “I have answered your prayer and chosen this place to be my temple where sacrifices are to be made.
13. When I close up the sky so that it doesn’t rain, or command locusts to devour the land’s vegetation, or send a plague among my people,
14. if my people, who belong to me, humble themselves, pray, seek to please me, and repudiate their sinful practices, then I will respond from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
15. Now I will be attentive and responsive to the prayers offered in this place.
16. Now I have chosen and consecrated this temple by making it my permanent home; I will be constantly present there.
17. You must serve me as your father David did. Do everything I commanded and obey my rules and regulations.
18. Then I will establish your dynasty, just as I promised your father David, ‘You will not fail to have a successor ruling over Israel.’
19. “But if you people ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, and decide to serve and worship other gods,
20. then I will remove you from my land I have given you, I will abandon this temple I have consecrated with my presence, and I will make you an object of mockery and ridicule among all the nations.
21. As for this temple, which was once majestic, everyone who passes by it will be shocked and say, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this temple?’
22. Others will then answer, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors, who led them out of Egypt. They embraced other gods whom they worshiped and served. That is why he brought all this disaster down on them.’”