1 Kings 9:1–28

¹ Now when Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD and the royal palace, and had achieved all that he had desired to do, ² the LORD appeared to him a second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. ³ And the LORD said to him: “I have heard your prayer and petition before Me. I have consecrated this temple you have built by putting My Name there forever; My eyes and My heart will be there for all time. ⁴ And as for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, with a heart of integrity and uprightness, doing all I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and ordinances, ⁵ then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised your father David when I said, ‘You will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.’ ⁶ But if indeed you or your sons turn away from following Me and do not keep the commandments and statutes I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods, ⁷ then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have sanctified for My Name. Then Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all peoples. ⁸ And when this temple has become a heap of rubble, all who pass by it will be appalled and will hiss and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ ⁹ And others will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—because of this, the LORD has brought all this disaster upon them.’” ¹⁰ Now at the end of the twenty years during which Solomon built these two houses, the house of the LORD and the royal palace, ¹¹ King Solomon gave twenty towns in the land of Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, who had supplied him with cedar and cypress logs and gold for his every desire. ¹² So Hiram went out from Tyre to inspect the towns that Solomon had given him, but he was not pleased with them. ¹³ “What are these towns you have given me, my brother?” asked Hiram, and he called them the Land of Cabul, as they are called to this day. ¹⁴ And Hiram had sent the king 120 talents of gold. ¹⁵ This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon imposed to build the house of the LORD, his own palace, the supporting terraces, and the wall of Jerusalem, as well as Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. ¹⁶ Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He had set it on fire, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and given it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife. ¹⁷ So Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Lower Beth-horon, ¹⁸ Baalath, and Tamar…