1 Kings 9–10

God Appears to Solomon Again

9After King Solomon had finished building the Temple and the palace and everything else he wanted to build, ^2*the Lord appeared to him again, as he had in Gibeon. ³The Lord said to him, “I have heard your prayer. I consecrate this Temple which you have built as the place where I shall be worshipped for ever. I will watch over it and protect it for all time. ⁴If you will serve me in honesty and integrity, as your father David did, and if you obey my laws and do everything I have commanded you, ^5*I will keep the promise I made to your father David when I told him that Israel would always be ruled by his descendants. ⁶But if you or your descendants stop following me, if you disobey the laws and commands I have given you, and worship other gods, ⁷then I will remove my people Israel from the land that I have given them. I will also abandon this Temple which I have consecrated as the place where I am to be worshipped. People everywhere will ridicule Israel and treat her with contempt. ^8*This Temple will become a pile of ruins,^a and everyone who passes by will be shocked and amazed. ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this Temple?’ they will ask. ⁹People will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt. They gave their allegiance to other gods and worshipped them. That is why the Lord has brought this disaster on them.’ ”

Solomon’s Agreement with Hiram

¹⁰It took Solomon twenty years to build the Temple and his palace. ¹¹King Hiram of Tyre had provided him with all the cedar and pine and with all the gold he wanted for this work. After it was finished, King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the region of Galilee. ¹²Hiram went to see them, and he did not like them. ¹³So he said to Solomon, “So these, my brother, are the towns you have given me!” For this reason the area is still called Cabul.^{b 14}Hiram had sent Solomon more than 4,000 kilogrammes of gold.

Further Achievements of Solomon

¹⁵King Solomon used forced labour to build the Temple and the palace, to fill in land on the east side of the city, and to build the city wall. He also used it to rebuild the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. ¹⁶(The king of Egypt had attacked Gezer and captured it, killing its inhabitants and setting fire to the city. Then he gave it as a wedding present to his daughter when she married Solomon, ¹⁷and Solomon rebuilt it.) Using his forced labour, Solomon also rebuilt Lower Beth Horon, ¹⁸Baalath, Tamar in the wilderness of Judah, ¹⁹the cities where his supplies were kept, the cities for his horses and chariots, and everything else he wanted to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and elsewhere in his kingdom. ^20–21For his forced labour Solomon used the descendants of the people of Canaan whom the Israelites had not killed when they took possession of their land. These included Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, whose descendants continue to be slaves down to the present time. ²²Solomon did not make slaves of Israelites; they served as his soldiers, officers, commanders, chariot captains, and horsemen.

²³There were 550 officials in charge of the forced labour working on Solomon’s various building projects.

²⁴Solomon filled in the land on the east side of the city, after his wife, the daughter of the king of Egypt, had moved from David’s City to the palace Solomon built for her.

^25*Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar he had built to the Lord. He also burnt incense^c to the Lord. And so he finished building the Temple.

²⁶King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Eziongeber, which is near Elath, on the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba, in the land of Edom. ²⁷King Hiram sent some experienced seamen from his fleet to serve with Solomon’s men. ²⁸They sailed to the land of Ophir, and brought back to Solomon more than 14,000 kilogrammes of gold.

The Visit of the Queen of Sheba

10^*The queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame,^d and she travelled to Jerusalem to test him with difficult questions. ^2*She brought with her a large group of attendants, as well as camels loaded with spices, jewels, and a large amount of gold. When she and Solomon met, she asked him all the questions that she could think of. ^3*He answered them all; there was nothing too difficult for him to explain. ^4*The queen of Sheba heard Solomon’s wisdom and saw the palace he had built. ^5*She saw the food that was served at his table, the living quarters for his officials, the organization of his palace staff and the uniforms they wore, the servants who waited on him at feasts, and the sacrifices he offered in the Temple. It left her breathless and amazed. ^6*She said to King Solomon, “What I heard in my own country about you^e and your wisdom is true! ^7*But I couldn’t believe it until I had come and seen it all for myself. But I didn’t hear even half of it; your wisdom and wealth are much greater than what I was told. ^8*How fortunate are your wives!^f And how fortunate your servants, who are always in your presence and are privileged to hear your wise sayings! ^9*Praise the Lord your God! He has shown how pleased he is with you by making you king of Israel. Because his love for Israel is eternal, he has made you their king so that you can maintain law and justice.” ^10*She presented to King Solomon the gifts she had brought: more than 4,000 kilogrammes of gold and a very large amount of spices and jewels. The amount of spices she gave him was by far the greatest that he ever received at any time.

¹¹(Hiram’s fleet, which had brought gold from Ophir, also brought from there a large amount of juniper wood and jewels. ¹²Solomon used the wood to build railings in the Temple and the palace, and also to make harps and lyres for the musicians. It was the finest juniper wood ever imported into Israel; none like it has ever been seen again.) ¹³King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba everything she asked for, besides all the other customary gifts that he had generously given her. Then she and her attendants returned to the land of Sheba.

King Solomon’s Wealth

¹⁴Every year King Solomon received almost 23,000 kilogrammes of gold ¹⁵in addition to the taxes^g paid by merchants, the profits from trade, and tribute paid by the Arabian kings and the governors of the Israelite districts.

¹⁶Solomon made 200 large shields, and had each one overlaid with almost 7 kilogrammes of gold. ¹⁷He also made 300 smaller shields, overlaying each one of them with almost 2 kilogrammes of gold. He had all these shields placed in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon.^h

¹⁸He also had a large throne made. Part of it was covered with ivory and the rest of it was covered with the finest gold. ^19–20The throne had six steps leading up to it, with the figure of a lion at each end of every step, a total of twelve lions. At the back of the throne was the figure of a bull’s head, and beside each of the two arms was the figure of a lion. No throne like this had ever existed in any other kingdom.

²¹All of Solomon’s drinking cups were made of gold, and all the utensils in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. No silver was used, since it was not considered valuable in Solomon’s day. ²²He had a fleet of ocean-going ships sailing with Hiram’s fleet. Every three years his fleet would return, bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and monkeys.

²³King Solomon was richer and wiser than any other king, ²⁴and the whole world wanted to come and listen to the wisdom that God had given him. ²⁵Everyone who came brought him a gift—articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons, spices, horses, and mules. This continued year after year.

^26*Solomon built up a force of 1,400 chariots and 12,000 cavalry horses. Some of them he kept in Jerusalem and the rest he stationed in various other cities. ^27*During his reign silver was as common in Jerusalem as stone, and cedar was as plentiful as ordinary sycomore in the foothills of Judah. ^28*The king’s agents controlled the export of horses from Musriⁱ and Cilicia,^{j 29}and the export of chariots from Egypt. They supplied the Hittite and Syrian kings with horses and chariots, selling chariots for 600 pieces of silver each and horses for 150 each.