Let Your eyes be open toward this House night and day, toward the place of which You have said: ‘My Name shall be there;’ listening to the prayer which Your servant shall pray toward this place.
Adonai said to him: “I have heard your prayer and your petition that you made before Me. I have consecrated this House, which you have built, to put My Name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there every day.
Then Urijah the kohen built an altar according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, and Urijah the kohen finished it by the time King Ahaz returned from Damascus.
Ahaz even collected the utensils of the House of God and cut the utensils of the House of God into pieces. He shut the doors of the House of Adonai and made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem.
He also removed the foreign gods and idols from the House of Adonai, as well as all the altars that he had built on the mount of the House of Adonai and in Jerusalem and threw them outside the city.
Then he placed the carved image of the idol that he had made in the House of God—of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this House and in Jerusalem that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My Name forever.
They in turn gave it to the carpenters and the builders to buy quarried stone as well as timber—for joining and making beams—for the buildings that the kings of Judah had let fall into ruin.
‘Since the day that I brought My people out of the land of Egypt, I did not choose a city out of all the tribes of Israel in which to build a House that My Name might be there. Nor did I choose any man to be a leader over My people Israel.
“The children of Judah have done what is evil in My sight”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“They have set their detestable things in the House that bears My Name to defile it.
“Then the place Adonai your God chooses to make His Name dwell, there you are to bring all that I command you—your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offering of your hand, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to Adonai.