מלכים א ט׳I Kings 9

When Solomon had finished building the House of GOD and the royal palace and everything that Solomon had set his heart on constructing,

GOD appeared to Solomon a second time, as before, at Gibeon.

GOD said to him, “I have heard the prayer and the supplication that you have offered to Me. I consecrate this House that you have built and I set My name there forever. My eyes and My heart shall ever be there.

As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked before Me, wholeheartedly and with uprightness, doing all that I have commanded you [and] keeping My laws and My rules,

then I will establish your throne of kingship over Israel forever, as I promised your father David, saying, ‘Your line on the throne of Israel shall never end.’

[But] if you and your descendants turn away from Me and do not keep the commandments [and] the laws that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them,

then I will sweep Israel off the land that I gave them; I will reject the House that I have consecrated to My name; and Israel shall become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

And as for this House, once so exalted, everyone passing by it shall be appalled and shall hiss. And when they ask, ‘Why did GOD do thus to the land and to this House?’

they shall be told, ‘It is because they forsook the ETERNAL their God who freed them from the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods and worshiped them and served them; therefore GOD has brought all this calamity upon them.’”

At the end of the twenty years during which Solomon constructed the two buildings, GOD’s House and the royal palace—

since King Hiram of Tyre had supplied Solomon with all the cedar and cypress timber and gold that he required—King Solomon in turn gave Hiram twenty towns in the region of Galilee.

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

“My brother,” he said, “what sort of towns are these you have given me?” So they were named the land of Cabul, as is still the case.

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

This was the purpose of the forced labor that Solomon imposed: It was to build the House of GOD, his own palace, the Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and [to fortify] Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

(Pharaoh king of Egypt had come up and captured Gezer; he destroyed it by fire, killed the Canaanites who dwelt in the town, and gave it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.)

So Solomon fortified Gezer, lower Beth-horon,

Baalith, and Tamar, cf. Ezek. 47.19; 48.28; qere Tadmor. in the wilderness, in the land [of Judah],

and all of Solomon’s garrison towns, chariot towns, and towns for his riders—everything that Solomon set his heart on building in Jerusalem and in the Lebanon, and throughout the territory that he ruled.

All the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites who were not of the Israelite stock—

those of their descendants who remained in the land and whom the Israelites were not able to annihilate—of these Solomon made a slave force, as is still the case.

But he did not reduce any Israelites to slavery; they served, rather, as warriors and as his attendants, officials, and officers, and as commanders of his chariots and riders.

These were the prefects that were in charge of Solomon’s works and were supervising the people engaged in the work, who numbered 550.

As soon as Pharaoh’s daughter went up from the City of David to the palace that he had built for her, he built the Millo.

Solomon used to offer burnt offerings and sacrifices of well-being three times a year on the altar that he had built for GOD, and he used to offer incense on the one that was before GOD. And he kept the House in repair.

King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Sea of Reeds in the land of Edom.

Hiram sent servants of his with the fleet, mariners who were experienced on the sea, to serve with Solomon’s men.

They came to Ophir; there they obtained gold in the amount of four hundred and twenty talents, which they delivered to King Solomon.