1 Kings 9:8

8 And this house will become a mass of broken walls, and everyone who goes by will be overcome with wonder at it and make whistling sounds; and they will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land and to this house?

1 Kings 9:8 Meaning and Commentary

1 Kings 9:8

And at this house which is high
The house of the most High, as some render it, and in high esteem, fame, and glory, as well as it was built on an high hill, and was itself one hundred and twenty cubits high, ( 2 Chronicles 3:4 ) , the Targum is,

``and this house which was high shall be destroyed:''

everyone that passeth by it shall be astonished;
at the ruins of the temple, and of the city of Jerusalem, which had been so magnificent:

and shall hiss;
in scorn and derision of the people of Israel, rejoicing in their ruin:

and they shall say, why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to
this house?
or suffered it to be done, to lie thus in waste and ruins; a land in which it had been said he delighted, and looked unto from one end of the year to the other, and a house he had taken up his dwelling in; surely something more than ordinary, they suggest, must be the cause of all this.

1 Kings 9:8 In-Context

6 But if you are turned from my ways, you or your children, and do not keep my orders and my laws which I have put before you, but go and make yourselves servants to other gods and give them worship:

7 Then I will have Israel cut off from the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for myself, I will put away from before my eyes; and Israel will be a public example, and a word of shame among all peoples.

8 And this house will become a mass of broken walls, and everyone who goes by will be overcome with wonder at it and make whistling sounds; and they will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land and to this house?

9 And their answer will be, Because they were turned away from the Lord their God, who took their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they took for themselves other gods and gave them worship and became their servants: that is why the Lord has sent all this evil on them.

10 Now at the end of twenty years, in which time Solomon had put up the two houses, the house of the Lord and the king's house,