“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for a sacrificial temple to me. ¹³ Whenever I close the skies so there is no rain, or whenever I command locusts to lay waste to the land, or whenever I send epidemics among my people, ¹⁴ when my people humble themselves—the ones who are called by my name—and pray, seek me,^[a] and turn away from their evil practices, I myself will listen from heaven, I will pardon their sins, and I will restore their land.

¹⁵ “Now therefore my eyes will remain open and my ears will remain listening to the prayers that are offered in this place. ¹⁶ Furthermore, I have chosen and have set apart for myself^[b] this Temple, intending my name to reside there forever. My eyes and my heart will reside there every day. ¹⁷ Now as for you, if you commune with me like your father did, doing everything that I have commanded you, including obeying my statutes and my legal decisions, ¹⁸ then I will make your royal throne secure, just as I agreed to do for your father David when I said, ‘You are to not lack a man to rule over Israel.’^[c]

¹⁹ “But if you^[d] turn away and abandon my statutes and my commands that I have given you, and if you^[e] walk away to serve other gods and worship them, ²⁰ then I will tear them up by the roots from the ground that I had given them! And as for this Temple that I have set apart for my name, I will throw it out of my sight and make it the butt of jokes^[f] and a means of ridicule among people worldwide!

²¹ “Furthermore, even though this Temple seems so exalted, everyone who passes by it will be so astounded that they will ask, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and to this Temple?’ ²² They will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors, who brought them from the land of Egypt, adopted other gods, worshipped them, and served them, therefore the Lord^[g] has brought all of this disaster on them.’”