1 Kings

New Appearance and Oracle

After Solomon had finished building the Lord’s house, the royal palace, and everything he wanted to build,

the Lord appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.

The Lord told him: “I have heard the prayer and supplication you made before me. I have consecrated this house you have built, and my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there forever.

As for you, if you will live in my presence, the way your father David did, with sincerity and uprightness, doing all that I have commanded you and keeping my decrees and laws,

I will affirm your kingship in Israel forever, as I promised your father David when I said, ‘You shall always have someone from your family on the throne of Israel.’

But if you or your children refuse to follow me, and disobey my commands and laws which I have set before you; if they serve and worship other gods,

then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them; and I will remove from my sight this house I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

This house will be reduced to a heap of stones. Everyone passing by will be astonished and jeer: ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and this house?’

Then people will answer: ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and they followed other gods, worshiping and serving them. That is why the Lord has brought all this evil on them.’”

You Are Cabul

During these twenty years, Solomon had built the Lord’s house and the royal house.

Hiram, king of Tyre, had supplied Solomon with as much cedar, cypress, timber, and gold as he wanted. Then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.

But when Hiram left Tyre to visit the cities Solomon had given him, he was displeased

and said: “What kind of cities have you given me, my brother?” And that is why, to this day, they are called the land of Cabul.

Hiram, however, had sent the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.

Recruitment of Workers

This is the account of the forced labor imposed by King Solomon for the building of the Lord’s house and his palace, the Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem; the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

(Pharaoh king of Egypt had captured and burned Gezer, putting to death the Canaanites who dwelt there. Then he had given the city as dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.)

So Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Lower Beth-horon,

Ba-alath, and Tamar in the desert, in the land of Judah,

all the store-cities that Solomon had, the cities for his chariots and those for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon wanted to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and all the land of his dominion.

On all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the people of Israel—

their descendants who were left in the land and whom the Israelites were unable to destroy completely—on all of these Solomon imposed forced labor and it remains so to this day.

Of the people of Israel, however, Solomon made no slaves. They were the soldiers, his officials, his commanders, his captains, his chariot commanders, and horsemen.

The overseers of Solomon’s work, in charge of those working, were five hundred and fifty.

When Pharaoh’s daughter went up from the city of David to the house Solomon had built for her, he began building the Millo.

After Solomon had finished the house, he came three times a year to offer up burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar, which he had built for the Lord, burning incense before the Lord.

King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-Geber, near Elath on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.

Hiram sent his servants, seamen familiar with the sea, to serve in the fleet together with the servants of Solomon.

They traveled to Ophir and delivered gold to King Solomon, totaling four hundred twenty talents.