Day 22 (Tuesday): 2 Chronicles 7:12-15
Today’s Passage
Read the passage – 2 Chronicles 7:12-15
Solomon had prayed for Israel when the temple was built that God would favour his people and God replied to him. While this promise is not directed at us, nevertheless, God has not changed, and he continues to work through prayer.
Questions to Consider
- How are people instructed to pray here?
- Do you believe God can turn communities around through such prayer?
Prayer
- Lord, let Your truth be clearly communicated and received with open hearts.
- Spend some time in reflection – humble yourself, pray, seek God’s face and turn away from sin. Ask God to heal our land. Pray for our local Indigenous people asking that God would be at work for their salvation.
Go Deeper
Martin J. Selman, 2 Chronicles: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 11, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 355–357
Humble repentance is a necessary stage in God’s ultimate aim to forgive and heal. Another essential element in the process is God’s promise to hear prayer. This is so important that an emphatic ‘I’ occurs in mt before I will hear, i.e. ‘I will indeed hear’. It is clearly a direct answer to Solomon’s own requests (cf. 6:19, 20, 21, 25, etc.), but the promise will also be explicitly fulfilled in 2 Chronicles 20:9; 30:20, 27; 33:13; 34:27.
Forgive is the only one of these terms that does not occur later on, though it does not appear in Chronicles outside 2 Chronicles 6–7 either. The idea of forgiveness is expressed in other ways, however, such as God’s wrath not being poured out (2 Chr. 12:7; cf. 30:8), being found by God (2 Chr. 15:2, 4, 15), God receiving an entreaty (2 Chr. 33:13, 19), and especially God’s atoning or pardoning (2 Chr. 30:18). This last passage is particularly interesting, since it also contains the only other reference in Chronicles to God’s healing (2 Chr. 30:20).
Both 2 Chronicles 7:14 and 30:18, 20, indicate that forgiveness and healing are part of the same work of God. Firstly, ‘healed the people’ in 2 Chronicles 30:20 is God’s answer to a prayer for pardon by those who set their hearts to seek God. Secondly, the promise to heal their land (v. 14) seems to be fulfilled in 2 Chronicles 30:20 by the phrase ‘healed the people’. Thirdly, healing throughout the Old Testament has a mixture of spiritual and physical applications. Sometimes healing is specifically equated with forgiveness (e.g. Hos. 14:4; Isa. 53:5; 57:18–19; Ps. 41:5); at other times it relates to physical healing (e.g. Gen. 20:17; Num. 13:20; 2 Kgs 20:5, 8).
When it is applied to the land, as here, it can refer to bringing the exiles back to the Promised Land (Jer. 30:17; 33:6–7) or restoring the land and its people to peace and security (Jer. 33:6; Isa. 57:19). ‘Heal their land’ may justly be described therefore as a comprehensive phrase for the restoration of all God’s purposes for the people of Israel and for the Promised Land.
How this promise may be applied in the modern world has been a matter of considerable debate, though restrictions of space must make the following brief comments suffice. Firstly, the prominence of the spiritual and moral aspects of healing make the Old Testament promises of healing consistent with the New Testament gospel. Secondly, the fact that spiritual restoration is offered to one nation also makes it available in principle to any other nation. Although no other nation enjoys precisely the same relationship with God as did ancient Israel, the spiritual health of each nation is something in which God has a direct interest. Thirdly, one must take note of the comprehensive nature of the biblical gospel. It has a strong corporate emphasis, in contrast to the individualism of much Western Christianity, and is just as concerned with the physical aspects of life as the spiritual. It is illuminating, for example, to read how much Jesus saw his ministry of physical healing as part of his message of the forgiveness of sins (cf. e.g. Matt. 8:1–9:8, especially 9:5–6). Though Christians today may find it hard to understand exactly how these various dimensions of God’s purposes relate to each other, the Chronicler agrees with other biblical authors that God himself has joined them together.
