---
title: 1 Kings 8:27
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-kings-8-27/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-kings-8-27.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Kings 8:27
testament: OT
section: History
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Kings 8:27

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> But will God indeed dwell upon the earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain You, much less this temple I have built.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "But will God really dwell on the earth? Look! The heavens, yes, the heaven of the heavens, cannot contain you; how much less, then, this house that I have built!"

## JW Usage

Witnesses cite Solomon's words at the temple dedication as part of the doctrine that Jehovah's true location is heaven, not the temple — supporting the view that Jesus, who walked on earth, cannot be the same God as Jehovah. The verse also undergirds the JW understanding of Jehovah's transcendence and the inadequacy of any earthly building or human form to contain him.

## Protestant Usage

Solomon's prayer is one of the great Old Testament confessions of divine omnipresence — and a quiet but decisive marker of who is actually God. Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Yahweh. Pair this with Jeremiah 23:24 ("Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?") and Psalm 139:7-12. At the doorstep, this verse is a useful sanity check on JW demonology: omnipresence is a divine attribute Yahweh holds and no creature shares — not the highest angel, not Satan, not anyone. So when JW pulpit language treats Satan as functionally behind every doubt and every door, ask whose attribute that is. Solomon answers it directly. And notice the implication for Christology: when the New Testament says Christ fills all things (Ephesians 4:10) or that "in him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9), it is ascribing to him precisely the divine attribute Solomon confessed no creature could share.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Satan Is Not Omnipresent — Locomotion, Not Ubiquity](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/satan-functional-omnipresence.md) — Job 1:7 — Going to and fro on the earth [Holy Spirit]