1 Kings - Chapter 9

¹ When Solomon had finished building the Temple of Yahweh, the royal palace and everything else which Solomon had wanted to do,

² Yahweh appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.

³ Yahweh said to him, 'I have heard your prayer and the entreaty which you have before me. I consecrate this temple which you have built: I place my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there always.

⁴ For your part, if you walk before me in innocence of heart and in honesty, like your father David, if you do everything that I command and keep my laws and my ordinances,

⁵ I shall make your royal throne secure over Israel for ever, as I promised your father David when I said, "You will never lack for a man on the throne of Israel."

⁶ But if you turn away from me, either you or your descendants, and instead of keeping my commandments and laws which I have laid down for you, you go and serve other gods and worship them,

⁷ then I shall banish Israel from the country which I have given them, and shall disown this Temple which I have consecrated for my name, and Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

⁸ As for this once-exalted Temple, everyone who passes by will be appalled, and they will whistle and say, "Why has Yahweh treated this country and this Temple like this?"

⁹ And the answer will be, "Because they deserted Yahweh their God who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and worshipped and served them; that is why Yahweh has brought all these disasters on them." '

¹⁰ At the end of the twenty years that it took Solomon to erect the two buildings, the Temple of Yahweh and the royal palace

¹¹ (Hiram king of Tyre had provided Solomon with all the cedar wood, juniper wood and gold that he wanted), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the territory of Galilee.

¹² But when Hiram came from Tyre to view the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them.

¹³ He said, 'What kind of towns are these you have given me, brother?' And to this day they are known as 'cabul-land'.

¹⁴ Hiram sent the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.

¹⁵ This is an account of the forced labour levied by King Solomon for building the Temple of Yahweh, his own palace, the Millo and the fortifications of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer

¹⁶ (Pharaoh king of Egypt mounted an expedition, captured Gezer, burnt it down and massacred the Canaanites living there; he then gave the town as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife,

¹⁷ and Solomon rebuilt Gezer), Lower Beth-Horon,

¹⁸ Baalath, Tamar in the desert, inside the country,

¹⁹ all Solomon's storage towns owned by Solomon, all the towns for his chariots and horses, and whatever Solomon was pleased to build in Jerusalem, in the Lebanon and in all the countries under his rule.

²⁰ All those who survived of the Amorite, Hittite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite peoples, who were not Israelites-

²¹ their descendants still remaining in the country on whom the Israelites had not been able to enforce the curse of destruction -- these Solomon levied as forced labourers, as is still the case today.

²² Solomon did not, however, impose forced labour on the Israelites; for they were soldiers, his officials, his administrators, his officers and his chariot and cavalry commanders.

²³ There were five hundred and fifty officials in charge of the foremen over Solomon's work, who supervised the people employed on the work.

²⁴ After Pharaoh's daughter had moved from the City of David up to the palace which he had built for her, he then built the Millo.

²⁵ Three times a year Solomon presented burnt offerings and communion sacrifices on the altar which he had built for Yahweh and set his burnt offerings smoking before Yahweh. Thus he completed the Temple.

²⁶ King Solomon equipped a fleet at Ezion-Geber, which is near Elath on the shores of the Red Sea, in Edom.

²⁷ For this fleet Hiram sent men of his, experienced sailors, to serve with those in Solomon's service.

²⁸ They went to Ophir and took on four hundred and twenty talents of gold, which they brought back to Solomon.

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