Tishrei 23 – If my people humble themselves, and pray…then I will hear from heaven…

October 7, 2023

Tishrei 23, 5784; from sunset October 7, 2023, to sunset October 8, 2023

This is the name “Shelomoh” (שְׁלׄמׄה – Solomon) as seen in the Aleppo Codex, written over one thousand years ago. The name Solomon stems from the verb-root “shalam” meaning “to be complete, sound, or peaceful.” It’s the same root that the familiar word “shalom” comes from.

Solomon Sends the People Home

After the extravagant two-week Temple dedication, Solomon sent the people home joyful and glad of heart! Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night with a word of confirmation and a word of warning.

On the twenty-third day of the seventh month he sent the people away to their homes, joyful and glad of heart for the goodness that the LORD had shown to David and to Solomon and to Israel his people. Thus Solomon finished the house of the LORD and the king’s house; all that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the LORD and in his own house he successfully accomplished.

Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time.

And as for you, if you walk before me, as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, `There shall not fail you a man to rule Israel.’ But if you turn aside 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 you up from the land which I have given you; and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which is exalted, every one passing by will be astonished, and say, `Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?” Then they will say, `Because they forsook the LORD the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore he has brought all this evil upon them’” – 2 Chronicles 7:10-22 (RSV)

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