2 Chronicles 7 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from the sky and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the heavy, radiant presence of Yahweh filled the house.

The priests couldn't even enter the house of Yahweh because the heavy, radiant presence of Yahweh filled Yahweh's house.

When all the Israelites saw the fire come down and the heavy, radiant presence over the house, they knelt with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped. They gave thanks to Yahweh: "He is good — his committed love lasts forever."

Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices before Yahweh.

King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty-two thousand cattle and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. And so the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.

The priests stood at their posts. The Levites played Yahweh's musical instruments — the ones King David had made for giving thanks to Yahweh, because "his committed love lasts forever" — whenever David would offer praise through them. The priests blew trumpets opposite them, and all Israel was standing.

Solomon also set apart the middle of the courtyard in front of Yahweh's house as sacred, because he offered the burnt offerings and the fat portions of the fellowship offerings there — since the bronze altar Solomon had made couldn't handle all the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and fat portions.

Solomon held the festival at that time for seven days — and all Israel with him, an enormous assembly — people from as far as Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt.

On the eighth day they held a solemn closing assembly, because they had celebrated the dedication of the altar for seven days and the festival for seven days.

On the twenty-third day of the seventh month, he sent the people home. They were joyful and feeling good about all the good things Yahweh had done for David, for Solomon, and for his people Israel.

Solomon finished building Yahweh's house and the royal palace. Everything Solomon had planned to do in Yahweh's house and his own palace — he pulled it off successfully.

Then Yahweh appeared to Solomon at night and said to him: "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice.

If I shut up the sky so there's no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send a plague among my people —

and my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn away from their destructive ways — then I myself will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their failures, and I will heal their land.

Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place.

I have now chosen and set apart this house so that my name will be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.

As for you — if you walk before me the way your father David walked, doing everything I've commanded you, and if you keep my guidelines and my rulings —

then I will establish your royal throne, just as I made a covenant with your father David when I said, 'You will never lack a man ruling over Israel.'

But if you turn away and abandon my guidelines and my commands that I've set before you, and go serve other gods and bow down to them —

then I will uproot them from my land that I gave them. And this house that I have set apart for my name — I will throw it out of my sight and make it a cautionary tale and a punchline among all peoples.

And this house, once so magnificent — everyone who passes by it will be stunned and say, 'Why did Yahweh do this to this land and to this house?'

And they will answer, 'Because they abandoned Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They latched onto other gods and bowed down to them and served them. That's why he brought all this disaster on them.'