2 Chronicles 6:22–31, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
2 Chronicles 6:22–31
Prayer addresses oath, defeat, drought, disease, and private pain
Oath, defeat, and shut heaven are brought to the house
If a man sin against his neighbour and an oath is laid on him, and the oath comes before the altar, Solomon asks God to hear from heaven, judge servants, requite the wicked, and justify the righteous. The first petition is public justice, not private comfort.
If Israel is put to the worse before an enemy because they have sinned, and they return, confess the Name, and pray in this house, hear from the heavens, forgive, and bring them again to the land. When heaven is shut and there is no rain because they have sinned, yet if they pray toward this place, confess, and turn when afflicted, hear, forgive, teach the good way, and send rain on the land given as inheritance. Defeat and drought are named as covenant crisis, not as a diagnosis of every later sufferer.
Dearth, siege, and the plague of a person's own heart
If there is dearth, pestilence, blasting, mildew, locusts, caterpillers, or enemies besieging the cities, whatsoever sore or sickness, then whatever prayer is made by any man or by all Israel, when every one knows his own sore and his own grief and spreads forth his hands in this house, hear from heaven, forgive, and render to each according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest, for thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men, that they may fear thee and walk in thy ways in the land.
The prayer often links disaster and sin. It also locates inner grief that only God knows. It does not explain every illness as personal guilt. Later biblical voices and Chronicles' own exceptions refuse a mechanical formula. Prayer here is not a replacement for evidence, medicine, public health, or accountable relief.
How this should shape us
Bring public wrong, communal failure, and private grief to God without turning every crisis into a verdict on the victim. Seek rain, justice, and forgiveness as this prayer does, and still do the human work of care the text never cancels.
Teach it back
Explain 2 Chronicles 6:22–31 in your own words. Include its movement, placement in Chronicles, one Samuel-Kings comparison, one material uncertainty, one affected person or group, and one modern use the complete context rules out.
Your explanation stays in this browser. It is not sent or saved.
Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: The prayer often links disaster and sin but does not explain every sufferer's guilt; later biblical voices and Chronicles' own exceptions prevent a mechanical formula.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
2 Chronicles 6:22–31, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, clauses, regnal formulas, temple vocabulary, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/2Chr.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 6:22–31
Supports: Unit-bounded translation comparisons and only those lexical, textual, grammatical, numerical, historical, and parallel-passage notes attached to these verses.
STEP Bible NET2full, 2 Chronicles 6:22–31, verse-attached translation and translator notes
Supports: Publisher-visible framing of the Chronicler's God, worship, Israel, kingship, retribution, and hope, used within its access limitation rather than as uninspected detailed commentary.
Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles (2009), chapter 2, 'The Worship of Yhwh,' pp. 156–208, and chapter 4, 'Kingship,' pp. 308–383; only the official exposed openings and ranges were inspected
Supports: A postexilic identity-negotiation model used as a reconstruction, never as ethnic prescription or explicit author biography.
Jonker, Verbum et Ecclesia 24.2 (2003), complete article, sections on Persian-period Yehud, older tradition, cultic identity, and multi-ethnic context
Supports: A recent critical reading of institutional legitimation and selective historical discourse, used without reducing all worship to elite manipulation.
Geyser-Fouché, HTS 79.1 (2023), complete official HTML, sections on selective narration, temple and personnel, royal patronage, Athaliah and Joash, exile, and power
Supports: Case-sensitive distinction between events and literary presentation in ancient historiography, including credibility limits and rhetorical shaping.
Kalimi, 'History, Historiography, Historical Evaluation and Credibility,' repository PDF pp. 7–25
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: 2 Chronicles 6:22–31, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: 2 Chronicles
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, clauses, regnal formulas, temple vocabulary, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/2Chr.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 6:22–31
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible Full Notes: 2 Chronicles
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press; STEP Bible presentation, 2019 edition; current web presentation
Supports: Unit-bounded translation comparisons and only those lexical, textual, grammatical, numerical, historical, and parallel-passage notes attached to these verses.
Exact location: STEP Bible NET2full, 2 Chronicles 6:22–31, verse-attached translation and translator notes
Open source ↗modern scholarly monograph limited access
The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought
Sara Japhet
Eisenbrauns / Penn State University Press, English edition 1989; reprint 2009
Supports: Publisher-visible framing of the Chronicler's God, worship, Israel, kingship, retribution, and hope, used within its access limitation rather than as uninspected detailed commentary.
Exact location: Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles (2009), chapter 2, 'The Worship of Yhwh,' pp. 156–208, and chapter 4, 'Kingship,' pp. 308–383; only the official exposed openings and ranges were inspected
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access scholarly article
The rhetorics of finding a new identity in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society: The case of the book of Chronicles
Louis C. Jonker
Verbum et Ecclesia 24(2), article 350, 2003
Supports: A postexilic identity-negotiation model used as a reconstruction, never as ethnic prescription or explicit author biography.
Exact location: Jonker, Verbum et Ecclesia 24.2 (2003), complete article, sections on Persian-period Yehud, older tradition, cultic identity, and multi-ethnic context
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access scholarly article
1 and 2 Chronicles as a discourse of power
Ananda Geyser-Fouche
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 79(1), article 8011, 2023
Supports: A recent critical reading of institutional legitimation and selective historical discourse, used without reducing all worship to elite manipulation.
Exact location: Geyser-Fouché, HTS 79.1 (2023), complete official HTML, sections on selective narration, temple and personnel, royal patronage, Athaliah and Joash, exile, and power
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access scholarly article
History, Historiography, Historical Evaluation and Credibility: Chronicles in Its Ancient Context
Isaac Kalimi
Poznań Theological Studies repository edition, pp. 7-25, 2019 repository edition
Supports: Case-sensitive distinction between events and literary presentation in ancient historiography, including credibility limits and rhetorical shaping.
Exact location: Kalimi, 'History, Historiography, Historical Evaluation and Credibility,' repository PDF pp. 7–25
Open source ↗