Yahweh Appears to Solomon a Second Time
1When Solomon had finished building the house of Yahweh, the king’s house, and everything Solomon desired to build, 2Yahweh appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3Yahweh said to him, “I have heard your prayer and the plea you have made before me. I have consecrated this house you have built, to put my name there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there always. 4As for you, if you walk before me as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing everything I have commanded you, keeping my statutes and my ordinances, 5then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ‘You will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.’ 6But if you or your descendants turn away from following me, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, 7then I will cut Israel off from the land I have given them, and I will cast out of my sight this house I have consecrated for my name. Israel will become a byword and an object of scorn among all peoples. 8And this house will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss, and they will ask, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land and to this house?’ 9And people will answer, ‘Because they abandoned Yahweh their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and they clung to other gods, bowed down to them, and served them — that is why Yahweh has brought all this disaster on them.’”
Solomon and Hiram Settle Accounts
10At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built the two houses — the house of Yahweh and the king’s house — 11Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar timber, cypress timber, and gold, as much as he desired — so King Solomon then gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee. 12Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, but they did not please him. 13He said, “What are these towns you have given me, my brother?” And he called them the land of Cabul, as they are still called today. 14Hiram had sent the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold.
Solomon’s Building Projects and Labor Force
15This is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the house of Yahweh, his own house, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16(Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer; he burned it down, killed the Canaanites living in the city, and gave it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.) 17Solomon rebuilt Gezer, and Lower Beth-horon, 18and Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness of that land, 19and all the store cities that belonged to Solomon, the cities for his chariots, the cities for his horsemen, and whatever else Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout the land of his dominion. 20As for all the people remaining from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites — 21their descendants who remained after them in the land, whom the Israelites had not been able to destroy completely — Solomon conscripted them into forced labor, as they still are today. 22But Solomon did not conscript any of the Israelites as slaves; they served as his soldiers, his officials, his commanders, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and his horsemen. 23These were the chief officers in charge of Solomon’s work — five hundred and fifty of them — who supervised the people doing the labor. 24Pharaoh’s daughter moved up from the city of David to her own house, which Solomon had built for her; it was then that he built the Millo. 25Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built for Yahweh, burning incense with them before Yahweh. So he completed the house.
Solomon’s Fleet and the Gold of Ophir
26King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, near Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. 27Hiram sent his own servants with the fleet, sailors who knew the sea, together with Solomon’s servants. 28They sailed to Ophir and brought back from there four hundred and twenty talents of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.
