1 Kings 9:1-19

¹After Solomon had finished the Lord's Temple and the royal palace, having accomplished everything he'd wanted to do,

²the Lord appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.

³The Lord told him, “I have heard your prayer and your request to me. I have dedicated this Temple you have built by placing my name on it forever; I will always watch over it and take care of it.

⁴As for you, if you follow my ways as your father David did, doing everything I've told you to do, and if you keep my laws and regulations,

⁵then I will make your throne secure forever. I made this agreement with your father David, telling him, ‘You will always have a descendant to rule over Israel.’

⁶But if you or your descendants turn away and do not keep the laws and the commandments I have given you, and if you go and serve and worship other gods,

⁷then I will cut Israel off from the land I have given them. I will banish from my presence this Temple I have dedicated to my honor, and I will make it an object lesson of ridicule among the nations.

⁸This Temple will become a pile of rubble. All who pass by it will be appalled and will hiss, saying, ‘Why has the Lord acted in such a way to this land and this Temple?’

⁹The answer will come, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their forefathers out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping them and serving them. That's why the Lord has brought all this trouble upon them.’”

¹⁰It took twenty years for Solomon to construct the two buildings—the Temple of the Lord and his own palace. After this,

¹¹King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had provided him with all the cedar and juniper and gold he wanted.

¹²But when Hiram went from Tyre to see the cities that Solomon had given him, he was not happy with them.

¹³“What are these towns you have given me, my brother?” asked Hiram. He called them the land of Cabul, the name they are known by to this day.

¹⁴Even so, Hiram sent the king 120 talents of gold in payment.

¹⁵Here is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon imposed to build the Lord's Temple, his own palace, the terraces, and the wall of Jerusalem, as well as Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

¹⁶Pharaoh, king of Egypt, had attacked and captured Gezer. He had set it on fire, killed the Canaanites living in the town. He had then given it as a wedding dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife.

¹⁷Solomon rebuilt Gezer and lower Beth-horon,

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

¹⁹and all of Solomon's towns for storage, and the towns for his chariots and for his horsemen, plus whatever Solomon wanted to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout his entire kingdom.