Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Kings 8:33-34

"When thy people Israel are smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee; if they turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray and make supplication unto thee in this house: then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest unto their fathers." — 1 Kings 8:33-34 (ASV)

When your people. — From the individual, the prayer turns to matters that concern the whole nation. It pictures various national calamities, and in each, it recognizes them not as mere evils, but as chastisements from God, who desires through them to teach and is most ready to forgive.

First, the prayer naturally dwells on disaster in battle. Throughout the history of the Exodus, the Conquest, the troubled age of the Judges, and the reigns of Saul and David, such disaster is acknowledged as a sign of Israel's unfaithfulness to God's covenant—whether through sin or idolatry—on which the victorious possession of the promised land depended.

On that history, the blessing and the curse of the Law (Leviticus 26:17; Leviticus 26:32–33; Deuteronomy 28:25) form a commentary of emphatic warning, and the Psalms repeatedly bring the same lesson home (Psalms 44:1–3; Psalms 44:9–17; Psalms 60:9–11; Psalms 89:42–46). With characteristic seriousness, Solomon looks back from his peaceful prosperity on the stormy past, and from it learns to pray for the future.