1When Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD, and the king's house, and everything else he wanted to build,
3The LORD said to him, "I have heard your prayer and your plea that you made before me. I have made this house holy, the house you have built, to put my name there for ever. My eyes and my heart will be there always."
4"And if you walk before me as David your father walked, with an honest heart and doing what is right, and if you do everything I have commanded you and keep my laws and my rules,"
5"then I will make the throne of your kingdom over Israel last for ever, as I promised David your father. I said, 'You shall never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.'"
6"But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my laws which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,"
7"then I will cut Israel off from the land I have given them. And this house, which I have made holy for my name, I will throw out of my sight. Israel will become a proverb and a word of scorn among all peoples."
8"And this house, which is high, will shock everyone who passes by it, and they will hiss. They will say, 'Why has the LORD done this to this land and to this house?'"
9"And they will answer, 'Because they left the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and they took hold of other gods, and worshipped them and served them. That is why the LORD has brought all this evil on them.'"
10At the end of twenty years, Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king's house.
11Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar trees and fir trees, and with gold, as much as he wanted. So then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.
12Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities Solomon had given him, and he was not pleased with them.
13He said, "What cities are these which you have given me, my brother?" And he called them the land of Cabul, as they are called to this day.
14And Hiram sent the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold.
15This is the account of the forced labour that King Solomon raised: it was to build the house of the LORD, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.
16Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and taken Gezer. He had burned it with fire and killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and he had given it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon's wife.
17So Solomon built Gezer, and Lower Bethhoron,
18and Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land,
19and all the storage cities that Solomon had, and cities for his chariots, and cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon wanted to build in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land he ruled.
20There were people still left from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, who were not of the children of Israel.
21Their children were left after them in the land, because the children of Israel had not been able to destroy them completely. Solomon made these people slaves to do forced labour, as they do to this day.
22But Solomon made no slaves of the children of Israel. They were his soldiers, his servants, his princes, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and his horsemen.
23These were the chief officers over Solomon's work: five hundred and fifty of them, who ruled over the people who did the work.
24Pharaoh's daughter came up out of the city of David to her house, which Solomon had built for her. Then he built Millo.
25Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built for the LORD, and he burned incense on the altar that was before the LORD. So he finished the house.
26King Solomon made a fleet of ships at Eziongeber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom.
27And Hiram sent his servants with the fleet, sailors who knew the sea, to work with the servants of Solomon.
28They came to Ophir, and took from there four hundred and twenty talents of gold, and brought it to King Solomon.