1 Kings 9
1 When Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD, the king’s house, and everything Solomon had desired to do,
2 the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.
3 The LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you made before me. I have consecrated this house that you built, to put my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there at all times.
4 As for you, walk before me as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing everything I commanded you. Keep my decrees and my laws.
5 Then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ‘You will never lack a man on the throne of Israel.’
6 But if you and your children turn away from me and do not keep my commandments and my decrees that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them,
7 then I will cut Israel off from the land I gave them, and I will cast this house, which I consecrated to my name, out of my sight. Israel will become a proverb and a taunt among all peoples.
8 This house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and whistle, and they will ask, ‘Why has the LORD done this to this land and this house?’
9 And they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and clung to other gods, bowing down to them and serving them. That is why the LORD brought all this disaster on them.’”
10 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king’s house,
11 Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar wood, cypress wood, and gold, all that he desired. Then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.
12 Hiram came from Tyre to see the cities that Solomon had given him, but they did not please him.
13 He said, “What are these cities you have given me, my brother?” And he called them the land of Cabul, as they are called to this day.
14 Hiram had sent the king 120 talents of gold.
15 This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon imposed to build the house of the LORD, his own house, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.
16 Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, captured Gezer, and burned it. He killed the Canaanites who lived in the city and gave it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.
17 Solomon rebuilt Gezer and Lower Beth-horon,
18 Baalath and Tamar in the wilderness, within the land,
19 all the storage cities Solomon had, the chariot cities and the cavalry cities, and everything Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout all the land under his rule.
20 All the people who remained of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites,
21 their descendants who had been left in the land after them, whom the Israelites had been unable to devote to destruction, Solomon conscripted for forced labor, as they remain to this day.
22 But Solomon made no slaves of the Israelites, for they were his warriors, his servants, his officials, his commanders, the officers over his chariots, and his horsemen.
23 These were the chief officers over Solomon’s work: 550 who supervised the people doing the work.
24 As soon as Pharaoh’s daughter came up from the City of David to the house Solomon had built for her, he built the Millo.
25 Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built to the LORD, and burned incense before the LORD. Thus he completed the house.
26 King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, near Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.
27 Hiram sent his servants in the fleet, experienced sailors who knew the sea, together with Solomon’s servants.
28 They went to Ophir and brought back 420 talents of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.
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