God’s promise to Solomon
9
📚And it came about, when Solomon had finished the building of the house of the LORD and the king’s house, and had done all of Solomon’s desire in which he delighted,9:1 Compare Eccl 2:4-10.⚜
2 📚that the LORD appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had 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 consecrated this house, which you have built, to put my name there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually.
4 📚“And if you will walk before me, as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep my statutes and my judgments, 5 📚then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised to your father David, saying, ‘You will not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’
6 📚“But if you at all turn away from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and 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 this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast from my sight; and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 📚And as for this house, which is exalted, every one who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss, and will say, ‘Why has the LORD done like this to this land and to this house?’ 9 📚And they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold of other gods and have worshipped them and served them; therefore the LORD has brought on them all this evil.’ ”
Other works of Solomon
10 📚And it came about at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king’s house 11 📚(now Hiram, the King of Tyre, had provided Solomon with cedar trees and pine trees and with gold, according to all his desire), that then King Solomon gave Hiram 📖 twenty towns in the land of Galilee. 12 📚And Hiram came out from Tyre to see the towns which Solomon had given him, and they did not please him. 13 📚And he said, “What towns are these which you have given me, my brother?” And he called them the “Land of Cabul 📖”, their name to this day. 14 📚And Hiram had sent to the king a hundred and twenty talents 📖 of gold.
15 📚And this is the reason for the forced labour 📖 which King Solomon raised: 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 📚For Pharaoh king of Egypt had come up and taken Gezer 📖 and burned it with fire, and killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and given it as a present to his daughter 📖, Solomon’s wife. 17 📚And Solomon built Gezer, and lower Beth-Horon 18 📚and Baalath and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land, 19 📚and all the storage cities that Solomon had, and cities for his chariots and cities for his horsemen, and what Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon and in all the land of his dominion.
9:19 Verse 1; 1 Kings 10:26.⚜
20 📚And 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 also not able to destroy completely, these Solomon conscripted as forced slave labourers to this day. 22 📚But Solomon did not make any slaves of the children of Israel, but they were warriors and his servants and his officials and his captains, and those in charge of his chariots and his horsemen. 23 📚These were the chief officials who were over Solomon’s work, five hundred and fifty, who supervised the people who did the work.
24 📚And Pharaoh’s daughter came up from the city of David to her house which Solomon had built for her. Then he built Millo.
25 📚And three times in a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built to the LORD, and he burned incense on the altar that was before the LORD. So he finished the house.
26 📚And King Solomon made a fleet of ships in Ezion-Geber 📖, which is near Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. 27 📚And Hiram 📖 sent his servants in the fleet, sailors who had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. 28 📚And they came to Ophir, and brought gold from there, four hundred and twenty talents 📖, and brought it to King Solomon.
9:28 The location of Ophir is not known. Probably it was in Arabia, or along the east coast of Africa. It was famous for gold – 2 Chron 8:18; Job 28:16; Ps 45:9; Isa 13:12.⚜