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2 Chronicles 7 · a question people ask

The LORD said "forever". How could the house then be cast out of his sight?

In the text

Both are in the same answer: "For now I have chosen and made this house holy, that my name may be there forever; and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually" (7:16), and "this house, which I have made holy for my name, I will cast out of my sight" (7:20), "if you turn away and forsake my statutes and my commandments" (7:19). 1 Kings 9 has the same forever and the same warning in the same speech (1 Kings 9:3, 9:7), and its honest question asks this too. 2 Chronicles goes on to tell the warning kept: "They burned God’s house" (36:19). It ends with the words of Cyrus: "he has commanded me to build him a house in Jerusalem" (36:23). The chapter doesn't say how the forever and the if fit together; it speaks them side by side, and these notes leave them there.

The verses

“For now I have chosen and made this house holy, that my name may be there forever; and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually.”
2 Chronicles 7:16 · World English Bible
“But if you turn away and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.”
2 Chronicles 7:19-20 · World English Bible
“The LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before me. I have made this house holy, which you have built, to put my name there forever; and my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually.”
1 Kings 9:3 · World English Bible
“then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have made holy for my name, out of my sight; and Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.”
1 Kings 9:7 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of 2 Chronicles 7

2 Chronicles 7: If my people

The two things 7:14 asks first and last, to humble themselves and to turn, come back in the verdict on Judah's last king: Zedekiah "didn’t humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet" (36:12) and "hardened his heart against turning to the LORD" (36:13), the same two Hebrew verbs. And the fire of 7:1 is told only in 2 Chronicles.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions