Chapter 9

God’s Promise and Warning

1 aNow it came about when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord, and bthe king’s house, and call 1that Solomon desired to do,

2 that athe Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon.

3 The Lord said to him, “aI have heard your prayer and your supplication, which you have made before Me; I have consecrated this house which you have built bby putting My name there forever, and cMy eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.

4 “As for you, aif you will walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you and will keep My statutes and My ordinances,

5 then aI will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, just as I 1promised to your father David, saying, ‘2You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

6 “aBut if you or your sons indeed turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them,

7 athen I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and bthe house which I have consecrated for My name, I will 1cast out of My sight. So cIsrael will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

8 “And this house will become 1aa heap of ruins; everyone who passes by will be astonished and hiss and say, ‘bWhy has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’

9 “And they will say, ‘aBecause they forsook the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them, therefore the Lord has brought all this adversity on them.’ ”

Cities Given to Hiram

10 aIt came about bat the end of twenty years in which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the Lord and the king’s house

11 (Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold according to all his desire), then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.

12 So Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, and they 1did not please him.

13 He said, “What are these cities which you have given me, my brother?” So 1they were called the land of 2aCabul to this day.

14 aAnd Hiram sent to the king 120 talents of gold.

15 Now this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon alevied to build the house of the Lord, his own house, the 1bMillo, the wall of Jerusalem, cHazor, dMegiddo, and eGezer.

16 For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, and killed the aCanaanites who lived in the city, and had bgiven it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.

17 So Solomon rebuilt Gezer and the lower aBeth-horon

18 and aBaalath and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land of Judah,

19 and all the storage cities which Solomon had, even athe cities for 1his chariots and the cities for 1bhis horsemen, and 2call that it pleased Solomon to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land 3under his rule.

20 As for all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, who were not of the sons of Israel,

21 atheir descendants who were left after them in the land bwhom the sons of Israel were unable to destroy utterly, cfrom them Solomon levied dforced laborers, even to this day.

22 But Solomon adid not make slaves of the sons of Israel; for they were men of war, his servants, his princes, his captains, his chariot commanders, and his horsemen.

23 These were the 1achief officers who were over Solomon’s work, five hundred and fifty, bwho ruled over the people doing the work.

24 As soon as aPharaoh’s daughter came up from the city of David to her house which Solomon had built for her, bthen he built the Millo.

25 Now athree times in a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built to the Lord, burning incense with them on the altar which was before the Lord. So he finished the house.

26 King Solomon also built a afleet of ships in bEzion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the 1Red Sea, in the land of Edom.

27 aAnd Hiram sent his servants with the fleet, sailors who knew the sea, along with the servants of Solomon.

28 They went to aOphir and took four hundred and twenty talents of gold from there, and brought it to King Solomon.