1 Kings 8:44-50

(44-50) If thy people go

out. — The prayer here returns once more to invoke God’s aid against earthly enemies. It is characteristic of the foreboding tone of sadness, which runs through the whole prayer, that it touches but lightly on the first petition, for God’s blessing on the arms of Israel, so often granted in days gone by, and enlarges on the second petition, for mercy and deliverance in the event of defeat and captivity. The spirit, and in the confession of 1 Kings 8:47 the very words, of this prayer of Solomon are strikingly reproduced in the solemn supplication of Daniel, when the close of the Babylonish captivity drew near (Daniel 9:4).There we find a confession of sin, perverseness, and wickedness, literally the same; we find also a similar pleading with God, as “keeping covenant and mercy,” a similar reference to the deliverance from Egypt, and a similar emphasis on the consecration of the city and its people by God’s “great name.” There is a striking pathos of circumstance in the fact, that over “the sanctuary that was desolate” (Daniel 9:17), with “his windows open towards Jerusalem,” Daniel utters the same prayer, which had marked the day of its consecration in all magnificence and prosperity.