1 Kings 8:30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

When they shall pray toward this place None but the priests might enter that place, but when the people worshipped in the courts of the temple, it was to be with an eye toward it, not with a superstitious regard or veneration, as though it were holy in itself, or in any respect the ground of their confidence in their worship, which would have been idolatry; but, as an instituted medium of their worship, helping the weakness of their faith, and typifying the mediation of Jesus Christ, who is the true temple, and to whom we must have an eye in all our approaches to, and intercourse with, God. Hence, the pious Jews that were at a distance looked toward Jerusalem for the sake of the temple, even when it lay in ruins, Daniel 6:10. Hear thou in heaven Which he adds to direct them, in their addresses to God in or looking toward this temple, to lift up their eyes above it, even to heaven, where God's most true and most proper dwelling-place is. When thou hearest, forgive The sins of thy people praying, and even of their prayers; which sins, if not pardoned, will certainly hinder the success of all their prayers, and the course of all thy blessings.