So listen to the requests of Your servant and Your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from Your dwelling place, from heaven; and when You hear, forgive.

“If Your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against You, and they return to You and confess Your name, and pray and make supplication before You in this house,

then whatever prayer or request is made by any man or all of Your people Israel, each knowing his own suffering and his own pain, and stretching out his hands toward this house,

then I will uproot Israel from My land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have consecrated for My Name, out of My sight, and will make it a proverb and an object of scorn among all nations.

Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was hidden from him which he did not make clear to her.

Then Rehoboam went to Shechem, because all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king.

“Your father [King Solomon] made our yoke hard (heavy, difficult); so now lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.”

He asked them, “What advice do you give to us regarding the answer to these people, who have spoken to me, saying, ‘Lighten the yoke which your father put on us’?”

The young men who grew up with him told him, “Tell the people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you make it lighter for us’: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins!

Rehoboam appointed Abijah the son of Maacah the chief leader among his brothers, because he intended to make him king.

Asa called out to the Lord his God, saying, “O Lord, there is no one besides You to help in the battle between the powerful and the weak; so help us, O Lord our God, for we trust in and rely on You, and in Your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God; let not man prevail against You.”

Then he said to them, “Levites, listen to me! Now consecrate (dedicate) yourselves and consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and get the filth [of idol worship] out of the Holy Place.

Now it is in my heart to make a covenant (solemn agreement) with the Lord God of Israel, so that His burning anger will turn away from us.

The priests slaughtered them and cleansed the altar from sin with their blood to atone for all Israel, because the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering be made for all Israel.

So they decided to circulate a proclamation throughout Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, that the people were to come to celebrate the Passover to the Lord God of Israel, at Jerusalem. For they had not celebrated it in great numbers as it was prescribed [for a long time].

For there were many in the assembly who had not consecrated themselves [that is, become ceremonially clean and free from all sin]; so the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lambs for everyone who was not clean, in order to make them holy for the Lord.

But Hezekiah did nothing [for the Lord] in return for the benefit bestowed on him, because his heart had become proud; therefore God’s wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.

But Neco sent messengers to Josiah, saying, “What business do we have with each other, O King of Judah? I am not coming against you today, but against the house with which I am at war, and God has ordered me to hurry. Stop for your own sake from interfering with God who is with me, so that He will not destroy you.”