1 Kings 8:44 (ASV)

Passage

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;

Nearby Context

1 Kings 8:42 (for they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy mighty hand, and of thine outstretched arm); when he shall come and pray toward this house;

1 Kings 8:43 hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the foreigner calleth to thee for; that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as doth thy people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by my name.

1 Kings 8:44 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;

1 Kings 8:45 then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause.

1 Kings 8:46 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;

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "people", "battle", "against", "enemy", "whatsoever", "thou", "shalt", and "send". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "people" and "battle", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 43's "hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place and..." into verse 45's "then hear thou in heaven their prayer...", so "people" and "battle" belong inside that flow. In 1 Kings context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "people" and "battle" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.