or whatsoever sickness there be; 29what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man his own plague and his own sorrow, and shall spread forth his hands toward this house: 30then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man according to all his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men;) 31that they may fear thee, to walk in thy ways, so long as they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. 32Moreover concerning the stranger, that is not of thy people Israel, when he shall come from a far country for thy great name's sake, and thy mighty hand, and thy stretched out arm; when they shall come and pray toward this house: 33then hear thou from heaven, even from thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for; that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name, and fear thee, as doth thy people Israel, and that they may know that [1]this house which I have built is called by thy name. 34If thy people go out to battle against their enemies, by whatsoever way thou shalt send them, and they pray unto thee toward this city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: 35then hear thou from heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their [2]cause. 36If 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 [3]they carry them away captive unto a land far off or near; 37yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried
probably corrupt: read either, in any one of their cities (cp. LXX.), or, by making a breach in their gates (Heb. biphĕrōṣ for b'ereṣ).
whatsoever plague] "Plague" is used here in the general sense of calamity, as in the phrase, "The Ten Plagues of Egypt."
32, 33. Cp. Is. lvi. 6 f. (also a post-exilic passage) where it is also said that the stranger must "keep the sabbath from profaning it and hold fast by my covenant" before he can hope to be heard by Jehovah.
35. maintain their cause] Render with mg., maintain their right.
36. there is no man that sinneth not] Cp. Eccl. vii. 20.
