1 Kings 8:49-51

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. 1 Kings 8:49 tn Heb “their prayer and their request for help.”
2. 1 Kings 8:49 tn Heb “and accomplish their justice.”
3. 1 Kings 8:50 tn Heb “and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their rebellious acts by which they rebelled against you, and grant them mercy before their captors so they will show them mercy.”
4. 1 Kings 8:51 tn Or “for.”
5. 1 Kings 8:51 tn Heb “inheritance.”
6. 1 Kings 8:51 tn The Hebrew term כּוּר (kur, “furnace,” cf. Akkadian kūru) is a metaphor for the intense heat of purification. A כּוּר was not a source of heat but a crucible (“iron-smelting furnace”) in which precious metals were melted down and their impurities burned away (see I. Cornelius, NIDOTTE 2:618-19). Thus Egypt served not as a place of punishment for the Israelites, but as a place of refinement to bring Israel to a place of submission to divine sovereignty.sn From the middle of the iron-smelting furnace. The metaphor of a furnace suggests fire and heat and is an apt image to remind the people of the suffering they endured while slaves in Egypt.