“Then Yahweh appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I hold back the heavens so that there is not rain, and when I command the locust to devour the earth, and if I send disease among my people, thenif my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and will pray and will seek my face and will turn from their evil ways, then I myself shall hear from the heavens and will forgive their sins and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer of this place.”
The words when, then, and ifin thispassageare closely tied to each other. The word when is calling attention to some fact upon which action is to be taken, or a conclusion based; a. behold! b. as a hypoth. part., propounding a possibility, if, a special application or development of the use if, whether, in an indirect question.
Richard Whitaker et al., The Abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament: From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles Briggs, Based on the Lexicon of Wilhelm Gesenius (Boston; New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906).
