Our Father Answers Solomon's Prayer
9 1 When Solomon had finished building the house of our Father, the royal palace, and everything he had desired to do, 2 our Father appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.
3 And our Father said to him, "I have heard your prayer and your plea that you made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, to put my name there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time. 4 As for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, 5 then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father: 'You will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.' 6 But if you or your children turn away from following me and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. 8 And this house will become a heap of rubble. Everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss, and they will say, 'Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this house?' 9 Then people will answer, 'Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods and worshiped them and served them—that is why the LORD has brought all this disaster on them.'
Solomon's Cities, Labor, and Ships
10 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of our Father and the royal palace, 11 King Hiram of Tyre having supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold, as much as he desired, King Solomon then gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee. 12 But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, they did not please him. 13 He said, "What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?" So he called them the land of Cabul, as they are still called today. 1 1 v13 Cabul sounds like the Hebrew for "like nothing" or "worthless" — Hiram's blunt verdict on the towns. 14 Hiram had sent the king 120 talents of gold.
15 This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon conscripted to build the house of our Father, his own palace, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, killing the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife. 17 So Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Lower Beth-horon, 18 Baalath, and Tamar in the wilderness, within the land, 19 as well as all the store cities that Solomon had, the cities for his chariots and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout 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 people of Israel— 21 their descendants who remained after them in the land, whom the Israelites had not been able to devote to destruction—these Solomon conscripted as forced laborers, as they are to this day. 22 But Solomon made no one of the people of Israel a slave; they were the soldiers, his servants, his officials, his commanders, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and his horsemen. 23 These were the chief officers over Solomon's work: 550 who supervised the people who carried out the work.
24 As soon as Pharaoh's daughter went up from the city of David to her own house that Solomon had built for her, he then built the Millo.
25 Three times a year Solomon used to offer burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar that he built for our Father, burning incense before him along with the offerings. So he finished the house.
26 King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. 27 And Hiram sent his servants with the fleet, sailors who knew the sea, to serve along with Solomon's servants. 28 They went to Ophir and brought back from there 420 talents of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.