Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Kings 8:44-50

"If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, by whatsoever way thou shalt send them, and they pray unto Jehovah toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for thy name; then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause. If they sin against thee (for there is no man that sinneth not), and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captive unto the land of the enemy, far off or near; yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captive, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have dealt wickedly; if they return unto thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling-place, and maintain their cause; and forgive thy people who have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee; and give them compassion before those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them" — 1 Kings 8:44-50 (ASV)

If thy people go out. — The prayer here returns once more to invoke God’s aid against earthly enemies. It is characteristic of the foreboding tone of sadness, which runs through the whole prayer, that it touches but lightly on the first petition, for God’s blessing on the arms of Israel, so often granted in days gone by, and enlarges on the second petition, for mercy and deliverance in the event of defeat and captivity. The spirit, and in the confession of 1 Kings 8:47 the very words, of this prayer of Solomon are strikingly reproduced in the solemn supplication of Daniel, when the close of the Babylonian captivity drew near (Daniel 9:4–15).

There we find a confession of sin, perverseness, and wickedness, literally the same; we find also a similar pleading with God, as keeping covenant and mercy, a similar reference to the deliverance from Egypt, and a similar emphasis on the consecration of the city and its people by God’s great name. There is a striking pathos of circumstance in the fact, that over the sanctuary that was desolate (Daniel 9:17), with his windows open towards Jerusalem, Daniel utters the same prayer, which had marked the day of its consecration in all magnificence and prosperity.