1 Raja-raja 8:29-30

8:29 Night and day may you watch over this temple, the place where you promised you would live. ¹  May you answer your servant’s prayer for this place. ²  8:30 Respond to the request of your servant and your people Israel for this place. ³  Hear from inside your heavenly dwelling place ⁴  and respond favorably. ⁵ 

Daniel 6:10

6:10 When Daniel realized ⁶  that a written decree had been issued, he entered his home, where the windows ⁷  in his upper room opened toward Jerusalem. ⁸  Three ⁹  times daily he was ¹⁰  kneeling ¹¹  and offering prayers and thanks to his God just as he had been accustomed to do previously.

[8:29]  ¹ tn Heb “so your eyes might be open toward this house night and day, toward the place about which you said, ‘My name will be there.’”

[8:29]  ² tn Heb “by listening to the prayer which your servant is praying concerning this place.”

[8:30]  ³ tn Heb “listen to the request of your servant and your people Israel which they are praying concerning this place.”

[8:30]  ⁴ tn Heb “and you, hear inside your dwelling place, inside heaven.” The precise nuance of the preposition אֶל (’el), used here with the verb “hear,” is unclear. One expects the preposition “from,” which appears in the parallel text in 2 Chr 6:21. The nuance “inside; among” is attested for אֶל (see Gen 23:19; 1 Sam 10:22; Jer 4:3), but in each case a verb of motion is employed with the preposition, unlike 1 Kgs 8:30. The translation above (“from inside”) is based on the demands of the immediate context rather than attested usage elsewhere.

[8:30]  ⁵ tn Heb “hear and forgive.”

[6:10]  ⁶ tn Aram “knew.”

[6:10]  ⁷ sn In later rabbinic thought this verse was sometimes cited as a proof text for the notion that one should pray only in a house with windows. See b. Berakhot 34b.

[6:10]  ⁸ map For the location of Jerusalem see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[6:10]  ⁹ sn This is apparently the only specific mention in the OT of prayer being regularly offered three times a day. The practice was probably not unique to Daniel, however.

[6:10]  ¹⁰ tc Read with several medieval Hebrew MSS and printed editions הֲוָה (havah) rather than the MT הוּא (hu’).

[6:10]  ¹¹ tn Aram “kneeling on his knees” (so NASB).

[6:10]  sn No specific posture for offering prayers is prescribed in the OT. Kneeling, as here, and standing were both practiced.