31<\/strong>. If any man trespass<\/em> ] Here Solomon enters on a series of specific petitions, the first of which is concerning any case of trespass, in which he implores that God would uphold the sanctity of an oath. The sense of ‘trespass’ in this verse must be = ‘be supposed to have trespassed.’ The person presumed to have offended is to be challenged to take an oath, and to God is left the punishment of the guilty and the acquittal of the innocent. Cf. Exo 22:7-11<\/span>.<\/p>\n and the oath come<\/em> ] It is better to take both words as verbs and supply a copulative. Render “ and he come and swear<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n The oath come before … – <\/B>The oath is equivalent to the man who swears the oath. A slight alteration in the present Hebrew text gives the sense and he (the accused) go and swear before thine altar, etc. The threats and the promises, the punishments and calamities of 1Ki 8:31-38<\/span> were distinctly named in the Law. See the margin reference.<\/P><\/p>\n Verse 31. If any man trespass against his neighbour<\/B><\/I>] Solomon puts here seven cases<\/I>, in all of which the mercy and intervention of God would be indispensably requisite; and he earnestly bespeaks that mercy and intervention on condition that the people pray towards that holy place, and with a feeling heart make earnest supplication.<\/P> <\/P> The FIRST case is one of doubtfulness<\/I>; where a man has sustained an injury, and charges it on a suspected person, though not able to bring direct evidence of the fact, the accused is permitted to come before the altar of God, and purge himself by his personal oath. Solomon prays that God may not permit a false oath to be taken, but that he will discover the truth, so that the wicked shall be condemned, and the righteous justified.<\/P> <\/p>\n If any man trespass, <\/B>i.e. if he be accused of a trespass. <\/P> An oath be laid upon him; <\/B>either by the judge, or by the party accusing him, or by the accused person himself; which was usual, when there were no witnesses. See Exo 22:8<\/span>,11<\/span>; Num 5:12<\/span>,15<\/span>, &c. <\/P> And the oath come before thine altar in this house; <\/B>for here God, who was appealed to as witness, was especially present. Hence the heathens used to swear at their altars. <\/P> <\/p>\n If any man trespass against his neighbour<\/strong>,…. By being unfaithful in a trust committed to him, or the like:<\/p>\n and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear<\/strong>; he denying that ever anything was committed to his trust, and there being no witnesses of it, the judge obliges him to take an oath he never had any:<\/p>\n and the oath come before thine altar in this house<\/strong>; where it was taken, as in the presence of God, and as appealing to him: hence in corrupt times they came to swear by the altar, Mt 23:20<\/span> and so the Heathens used to take their oaths in the temples of their gods, and at their altars, as the instances of Callicrates c and Hannibal d show, and others Grotius refers to; yea, they also laid hold on the altar, at least touched it when they swore e to give the greater sanction to the oath.<\/p>\n c Cornel. Nep. Vit. Dion. l. 10. c. 8. d Ib. Hannibal. l. 23. c. 2. e Vid. Lydii Dissert de Jurament. c. 4. sect. 7.<\/p>\n Many Petitions, <\/strong>1Ki 8:31-45<\/span> AND <\/strong>2Ch 6:21-35<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Solomon’s petitions number seven in all, <\/em>which he addressed to the Lord in the presence of the assembly. All of these were confessions of guiltiness likely to arise in Israel, and recognition that repentance would be necessary for the Lord to show them His mercy. When the petitioner came in repentance the Lord is asked to hear and grant his petition.<\/em><\/p>\n The first petition dealt with a condition <\/em>where a neighbor is sinned against by trespass, or false oath, and such. If the matter is brought before the Lord in the temple He is requested to hear in heaven by recompensing evil on the guilty and by justifying the righteous. This may have had direct application in the trespass offering (note law of the trespass offering, Lev 6:1<\/span> ff).<\/em><\/p>\n The second petition <\/em>deals with the situation when Israel shall have sinned against the Lord and He has allowed them to be smitten by their enemies. They may then turn and confess their sin and seek forgiveness of the Lord. When they do this Solomon asks the Lord to hear their petition and grant them freedom in their land once more. Their failure to do this has presently kept them out of their land of Palestine many centuries (Lev 26:32-35<\/span>).<\/em><\/p>\n The third petition <\/em>concerns drought in the land, when the Lord shall withhold the rain for the sin of the people. Israel may then turn and walk according to the way of the Lord and look toward the temple and pray to Him to heal their land and give again the rain. Solomon asks the Lord in that event to hear their petition and grant it.<\/em><\/p>\n The fourth petition <\/em>describes various devastations which may come upon the land and which produce famine and want on the sinful people of Israel. This may come from pestilence, blasting (of the grain by a hot wind), mildew, locust and caterpillar infestation, all common events in the near East. In such conditions there was also likelihood of an enemy invasion, taking advantage of the physical weakness. Whatever the plague or sickness should be, the petition besought the Lord to hear those who would spread forth their hands to Him and seek His succor, whether individuals, or all the people and to grant them relief.<\/em><\/p>\n The fifth petition <\/em>deals with the request of foreigners who might come to call on the God of Israel, even from a far away country. Solomon surmised that people of foreign lands would hear of the greatness of Israel’s God and would come to Jerusalem with their petitions (see Act 8:27<\/span>). In such case he prayed that the Lord would grant the foreigner’s request, that all the earth might learn to fear the name of the Lord.<\/em><\/p>\n The sixth petition has to do with the times when Israel shall go out to war. If they call on the Lord to aid them in the battle, He is requested to hear them and to give them victory.<\/p>\n (31, 32) If any man trespass.<\/strong>These verses deal with the simplest exemplification of the sacredness of the Temple in the case of the oath of expurgation of one accused of crime (see Exo. 22:7<\/span>). Of these oaths, and the sophistical distinctions between the various forms of them, we have Our Lords notice in Mat. 23:16-22<\/span>. Such an oath has a twofold forcea force purely spiritual, inasmuch as it solemnly recognises the Presence of God, and by such recognition shames all falsehood as a kind of sacrilege; and a force which is of the Law, inasmuch as the invocation of Gods punishment in case of falsehood appeals to godly fear. Solomon prays that God will accept the oath under both aspects, and by His judgment distinguish between the innocent and the guilty.<\/p>\n 31<\/strong>. <\/strong> An oath be laid upon him <\/strong> According to the requirement of the law in Exo 22:7-11<\/span>, which provided that if a man suspect his neighbour of any kind of trespass, and has no evidence to convict him, he can require him to make oath of his integrity. This clear reference to the laws of the Pentateuch, as well as many other expressions in this prayer, serve also to confute rationalism in the assertion of a late origin of the books of Moses.<\/p>\n (31) If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house: (32) Then hear thou in heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon his head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his righteousness. (33) When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house: (34) Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest unto their fathers. (35) 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: (36) Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way wherein they should walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance. (37) If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be; (38) What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house: (39) Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men;) (40) That they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. (41) Moreover concerning a stranger, that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name’s sake; (42) (For they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy stretched out arm;) when he shall come and pray toward this house; (43) Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for: that all people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy people Israel; and that they may know that this house, which I have builded, is called by thy name. (44) If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, whithersoever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the LORD toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have built for thy name: (45) Then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause. (46) If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near; (47) Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; (48) And so return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: (49) Then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause, (50) And forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them: (51) For they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron: (52) That thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them in all that they call for unto thee. (53) For thou didst separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord GOD.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n After the petitions for general blessings, as they relate to redemption by the Lord Jesus, to the church at large; Solomon, in this part of his prayer, enters into the cases of a great variety of particular mercies, all to the same amount: resting wholly upon the covenant promises of God in Christ, of which this temple was a type. Solomon mentions the case of an appeal by oath, between one man and another, to determine right judgment; the parties looking towards the temple, by way of adjusting what was lawful: he mentions the case of public distresses, in national wars, or famine, or pestilence; or the shutting up of the heaven, and no rain given to bring forth the fruits of the earth: he mentions the case of private calamity, such as the distress of a man’s soul, from a view of the plague of his own heart: he limits not these blessings to Israel, but, no doubt, led by the Holy Ghost to take in the Gentile church also, he includes the case of the stranger, brought to the Lord by the outward report of God’s great name, and by the inward drawings of God’s great love he adverts also to the case of war, and points out, that if the Lord’s heritage, by reason of sin, should be given up for a time to the scourge of their enemies: on all these instances he dwells particularly. And in short, that Solomon might omit nothing in this earnest cry to God, for being heard by the Lord, by virtue of this temple building, beholding it as pointing to Jesus, and Jesus only; the king adds, in all that the people should call upon him for, his dwelling prayer that God would hear, from heaven his dwelling place, and both answer and forgive: And, as if still with an eye to Jesus the promised Seed, in whom, and with whom all blessings could alone be looked for; Solomon closes his prayer with that unanswerable argument for success, that the Lord God had separated his people from all nations: had made them his own; pledged himself to be their God, from the day he had brought them out of the land of Egypt, by Moses. Here, Reader! pause to remark with me, the ground work and foundation of success to all Solomon’s petition. Not for desert; not for prayer; not for repentance; no, not for faith, in looking to Jesus, which this temple represented: for all these are the sweet fruits and effects of God’s love; not the cause of that love. But it is wholly resulting from covenant grace, and covenant favor, founded and given to Israel, in Christ Jesus before the world began. This is the tenor of the Covenant; I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Even so, Father, is our Lord’s own gracious conclusion upon it, and throws to the ground all impious and presumptuous reasoning’s of men: Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. Exo 33:19<\/span> ; Mat 11:26<\/span> .<\/p>\n 1Ki 8:31 If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house:<\/p>\n Ver. 31. And an oath be laid upon him, to cause him to swear.<\/strong> ] An oath may lawfully be taken for the help of truth in necessity, and not else. Hence the Hebrew word Nishbang<\/em> is a passive, and signifieth rather to be sworn, than to swear. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And the oath come before thine altar.<\/strong> ] That sign of God’s presence there. Amongst us, he that sweareth, layeth his hand on a Bible, for like cause.<\/p>\n If = When, or Whosoever shall. <\/p>\n trespass. See App-44. This shows an acquaintance with the Pentateuch. See 1Ki 8:33, and App-47. <\/p>\n and the oath come. Omitted by Aramaean, Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate versions. <\/p>\n If any man: Solomon here puts seven cases, in all of which the mercy and intervention of God would be indispensably requisite; and he earnestly bespeaks that mercy and intervention, on condition that the people pray towards that holy place, and with a feeling heart make earnest supplication to the throne of mercy. <\/p>\n trespass: 2Ch 6:22, 2Ch 6:23 <\/p>\n an oath be laid upon him: Heb. he require an oath of him, Exo 22:8-11, Lev 5:1, Pro 30:9 <\/p>\n the oath: Num 5:16-22 <\/p>\n Reciprocal: Exo 22:9 – for all manner of trespass Psa 88:2 – General<\/p>\n 1Ki 8:31. If any man, &c. He now puts divers cases in which he supposed application would be made to God in prayer, in or toward this house of prayer; and first that of Gods being appealed to by an oath for the determining of any controverted right between man and man. If any man trespass against his neighbour If a man be accused of a trespass. And an oath be laid upon him Either by the judge, or by the party accusing him, or by the accused person himself, claiming the privilege of perjuring himself by an oath from the trespass laid to his charge, which was usual when there were no witnesses. Solomon seems here to refer chiefly to the case of those who were accused of denying that which was said to be deposited with them by their neighbour. And the oath come before thine altar Where God, who was appealed to as a witness, was supposed to be especially present. Hence the heathen were wont to swear at their altars; calling on their gods to witness to the truth of what they said, and to punish them if they uttered any falsehood therein.<\/p>\n 8:31 If any man trespass against his neighbour, {k} and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house:<\/p>\n (k) That is, the judge or neighbours.<\/p>\n If any man trespass against his neighbor, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house: 31. If any man trespass ] Here Solomon enters on a series of specific petitions, the first of which is concerning any case of trespass, in … Continue reading “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 8:31”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"