1 Kings 9

Revised Geneva Translation

9 When Solomon had finished building the House of the LORD, and the king’s palace, and all of Solomon desires which it pleased him to do,

² then the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, as He appeared to him at Gibeon.

³ And the LORD said to him: “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me. I have sanctified this House which you have built to put My Name there forever. And My Eyes and My Heart shall be there perpetually.

⁴ “And if you will walk before Me, as David your father walked in pureness of heart and in righteousness, to do according to all that I have Commanded you, and keep My Statutes and My Judgments,

⁵ “then will I establish the throne of your kingdom upon Israel forever, as I promised to David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man upon the throne of Israel.’

⁶ “If you and your children turn away from Me, and will not keep My Commandments, My Statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,

⁷ “then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them. And I will cast the House which I have sanctified for My Name out of My sight. And Israel shall be a proverb and a common talk among all people.

⁸ “Even this high House shall be so. Everyone who passes by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss, and they shall say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this House?’

⁹ “And they shall answer, ‘Because they forsook the LORD their God, Who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them. Therefore, the LORD has brought all this misery upon them.’”

¹⁰ And at the end of twenty years, after Solomon had built the two houses (the House of the LORD and the king’s palace,

¹¹ for which Hiram the king of Tyre had brought timber from cedar and fir trees to Solomon, and gold, and whatever he desired), then King Solomon gave twenty cities in the land of Galilee to Hiram.

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

¹³ Therefore he said, “What cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” And he called them the land of Cabul to this day.

¹⁴ And Hiram had sent the king one hundred twenty talents of gold.

¹⁵ And this is the reason for the tribute (why King Solomon raised tribute): to build the House of the LORD, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.

¹⁶ Pharaoh, king of Egypt, had come up and taken Gezer and burnt it with fire and killed the Canaanites who dwelt in the city and gave it for a present to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.

¹⁷ Therefore, Solomon built Gezer and Beth Horon the lower,

¹⁸ and Baalath and Tadmor, in the wilderness of the land,

¹⁹ and all the cities of store that Solomon had (cities for chariots and cities for horsemen and all that Solomon desired and would build in Jerusalem and in Lebanon and in all the land of his dominion).

²⁰ All the people who were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not of the children of Israel

²¹ (their children who were left after them in the land whom the children of Israel were not able to destroy), those Solomon made tributaries to this day.

²² But of the children of Israel Solomon made no bondmen. But they were men of war and his servants and his princes and his captains and rulers of his chariots and his horsemen.

²³ These were the princes of the officers who were over Solomon’s work: five hundred fifty. And they ruled the people who labored in the work.

²⁴ And Pharaoh’s daughter came up from the City of David to the house which Solomon had built for her. Then he built Millo.

²⁵ And three times a year Solomon offered Burnt Offerings and Peace Offerings upon the Altar which he built to the LORD. And he burnt incense upon the Altar that was before the LORD, when he had finished the House.

²⁶ Also, King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion Geber, which is beside Elath and the edge of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.

²⁷ And Hiram sent his servants (who were mariners and had knowledge of the sea) with the navy, with the servants of Solomon.

²⁸ And they came to Ophir and fetched four hundred twenty talents of gold from there and brought it to King Solomon.