Bible Strands
1 Kings 8:35
When the skies are shut and there is no rain because Your people have sinned against You, and they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and they turn from their sins because You have afflicted them,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Solomon speaks to God in the newly built temple during the dedication ceremony, outlining the protocol for national repentance. He addresses the divine audience as the mediator of Israel’s covenant relationship, framing the moment as a conditional prayer for future crises.
The words — The phrase בְּהֵעָצֵר שָׁמַיִם (be./he.'a.Tzer sha.Ma.yim) literally renders "when the heavens are shut up." It denotes the physical closure of the sky, which the text directly ties to the cessation of rain.
The thread — This drought motif functions as covenant judgment in Deuteronomy 11:17 and Leviticus 26:19, where withheld rain signals divine anger. Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 8:33-36 repeats this pattern, linking military defeat and environmental drought to the same root cause and resolution.
Why it lands — It requires the reader to recognize that covenant failure produces tangible consequences and that restoration demands precise actions: prayer toward God’s dwelling, confession of His name, and turning from sin. The text presents repentance as the necessary mechanism for divine attention, not a guarantee of immediate relief.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them:
Cross-references
- Leviticus 26:19 I will break down your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze,
- Deuteronomy 11:17 or the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you. He will shut the heavens so that there will be no rain, nor will the land yield its produce, and you will soon perish from the good land that the LORD is giving you.
- 1 Kings 8:33 When Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, and they return to You and confess Your name, praying and pleading with You in this temple,
- 2 Samuel 24:13 So Gad went and said to David, “Do you choose to endure three years of famine in your land, three months of fleeing the pursuit of your enemies, or three days of plague upon your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should reply to Him who sent me.”
- Luke 4:25 But I tell you truthfully that there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and great famine swept over all the land.
- Revelation 11:6 These witnesses have power to shut the sky so that no rain will fall during the days of their prophecy, and power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they wish.
- Deuteronomy 28:12 The LORD will open the heavens, His abundant storehouse, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none.
- Deuteronomy 28:23 The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.
- 1 Kings 8:29 May Your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, toward the place of which You said, ‘My Name shall be there,’ so that You may hear the prayer that Your servant prays toward this place.
- 1 Kings 17:1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”