1 KINGS 8:22-30, 41-43
22 Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. 23 He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, 24 the covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand. 25 Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, ‘There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.’ 26 Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant my father David.
27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! 28 Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; 29 that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place.30 Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.
41 “Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name42 —for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, 43 then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.”
The compromise, if you can call it that, between the establishmentarians and the hard-line prophets who were against the whole imperial idea, was that only the name and not the full glory of God would be said to dwell in the temple. This gave the temple-boosters a fixed focal point for their religious beliefs and practices, at the same time as it respected the temple-busters in their conviction that God was too immense to be kept in a house. But it was still a compromise and the debate raged on, mainly between priests (boosters) and prophets (busters).
Solomon resisted the idea of the temple serving as God’s earthly residence, as a counterpart to that in neighboring nations where the effigy of a god was honored and adored. In his prayer of dedication he refers several times to heaven as God’s true dwelling place. Before it became, in later centuries, the homeland paradise for departed true believers, the wide expanse of heaven was a symbol of God’s exalted majesty and boundless being.
As he spread out his hands to heaven, Solomon was acknowledging God as essentially Other, beyond human grasp and beyond even existence itself.
Bible Tracts 