Bible Strands
2 Chronicles 6:26
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
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Study note
Setting — Solomon prays to Yahweh at the Temple dedication, outlining a covenant scenario where drought strikes as divine discipline. The prayer anticipates Israel's repentance and petitions God to listen from heaven when they turn toward this place.
The words — The Hebrew phrase בְּהֵעָצֵר הַשָּׁמַיִם (be.he'atzer ha.shamayim) literally means "when the heavens are shut up." It is paired with וְהִתְפַּלְּלוּ (ve.hitpallu), "and they will pray," marking the shift from judgment to petition.
The thread — This drought motif echoes the covenant curses in Leviticus 26:19, Deuteronomy 11:17, and Deuteronomy 28:23, where God shuts the heavens as direct punishment for sin. The pattern continues in 2 Chronicles 6:27, which immediately follows with a petition for rain upon the land.
Why it lands — The text states that physical affliction like drought functions as a catalyst for repentance rather than merely punishment. It requires the reader to acknowledge that prayer directed toward God's chosen place must be accompanied by confession and turning from sin.
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 the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; yet if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou dost afflict 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.
- Deuteronomy 28:23 The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.
- 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!”
- 2 Chronicles 33:12 And in his distress, Manasseh sought the favor of the LORD his God and earnestly humbled himself before the God of his fathers.
- Proverbs 28:13 He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.
- Isaiah 5:6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.”
- Isaiah 50:1 This is what the LORD says: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? Look, you were sold for your iniquities, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
- Jeremiah 14:1 This is the word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought:
- Ezekiel 14:13 “Son of man, if a land sins against Me by acting unfaithfully, and I stretch out My hand against it to cut off its supply of food, to send famine upon it, and to cut off from it both man and beast,