¹⁶For now have I chosen and hallowed this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually. ¹⁷And as for thee, if thou wilt walk before me as David thy father walked, and do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgements; ¹⁸then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom, according as I covenanted with David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man to be ruler in Israel. ¹⁹But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them: ²⁰then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. =16.= _for ever_] Compare xxx. 8. ²¹And this house, which is so high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and to this house? =21.= _which is so high_] The Hebrew must be rendered by a past tense, =which was high=――as though the speaker spoke from a later standpoint than the age of Solomon. That interpretation, however, is clumsy; and in all probability the reading in Chronicles is simply an attempt to improve an erroneous text in Kings. There the original reading probably was “and this house _shall become ruins_; every one who passes by,” etc. ²²And they shall answer, Because they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them. =22.= _they shall answer_] Render, =men shall say=. CHAPTER VIII. =1‒6= (compare 1 Kings ix. 10, 11, 17‒19). SOLOMON’S CITIES. ¹And it came to pass at the end of twenty years, wherein Solomon had built the house of the LORD, and his own house, =1.= _twenty years_] Compare 1 Kings vi. 38, vii. 1. ²that the cities which Huram had given to Solomon, Solomon built them, and caused the children of Israel to dwell there. =2.= _the cities which Huram had given to Solomon_] According to 1 Kings ix. 12, 13 it was Solomon who gave _Huram_ cities. Huram however was not pleased with them (1 Kings ix. 12, 13), and from this fact the English translators of 1611 concluded that Huram rejected them and “restored” them. No reconciliation of these different versions is tenable; and it is to be supposed that the Chronicler’s tradition is unhistorical――the idea that the wealthy Solomon could not or did not purchase what he required from Huram except by parting with a portion of the territories of Israel was repugnant, if not incredible, in the Chronicler’s day. _built them_] i.e. fortified them.