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God Appears to Solomon Again
1After King Solomon had finished building the Temple and the palace and everything else he wanted to build,
2the 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 worshiped forever. 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,
5I 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, 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 worshiped. People everywhere will ridicule Israel and treat her with contempt.
8This Temple will become a pile of ruins, 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 worshiped 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.
14Hiram had sent Solomon almost five tons of gold.
Further Achievements of Solomon
15King Solomon used forced labor 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 labor, 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 labor 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 cavalry.
23There were 550 officials in charge of the forced labor 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.
25Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar he had built to the Lord. He also burned incense 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 sailors from his fleet to serve with Solomon's men.
28They sailed to the land of Ophir and brought back to Solomon about sixteen tons of gold.