1 Kings 9

God Shows Up Again & Solomon’s Deals

1 After Solomon wrapped up building the Lord’s temple, his own crib, and everything else he had his heart set on building,

2 The Lord popped up to Solomon again, just like He did the first time in Gibeon.

3 And the Lord told him, “I heard your prayer and your plea that you put before Me. I made this house you built holy, so My Name can be there forever. My eyes and My heart is going to be on it for always.”

4 “Now, if you walk straight with Me, just like your father David did, with a real heart and doing everything I told you, and you keep My rules and My laws?”

5 “Then I will lock in your throne over Israel forever, just like I promised your father David, saying, ‘You will never be short of a man sitting on the throne of Israel.’”

6 “But if you or your kids turn away from Me and do not follow My commands and My rules that I laid out for you, and you all go serve other gods and bow down to them?”

7 “Then I am going to cut Israel off from the land I gave them. And this house that I made holy for My Name, I will toss it out of My sight. Israel is going to become a joke and a talking point among all nations.”

8 “And this house, even though it is high and mighty now, everyone who passes by it is going to be stunned and whistle, saying, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this house?’”

9 “And they are going to say, ‘Because they dipped on the Lord their God, who snatched their ancestors out of Egypt, and they grabbed onto other gods and bowed down to them and served them. That is why the Lord brought all this trouble on them.’”

10 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built the two houses, the Lord’s temple and the king’s crib.

11 (King Hiram of Tyre had supplied Solomon with all the cedar, cypress, and gold he wanted), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee.

12 But when Hiram came from Tyre to check out the towns Solomon gave him, he was not feeling them.

13 He was like, “What kind of towns are these, my brother, that you gave me?” So he called them the Land of Cabul (meaning ‘Good for Nothing’) to this day.

14 Now, Hiram had sent the king a hundred twenty talents of gold.

15 This was the rundown of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the Lord’s temple, his own crib, the Millo (that is the landfill), the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

16 (Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had rolled up and taken Gezer, burned it down, and killed the Canaanites who lived there. Then he gave it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.)

17 So Solomon rebuilt Gezer, then Lower Beth Horon,

18 Baalath, and Tamar in the desert in the land of Judah,

19 Along with all his storage cities, the cities for his chariots, the cities for his horsemen, and whatever else Solomon felt like building in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout all the territory he ruled.

20 All the people who were left from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites.

21 Their descendants who were still in the land, whom the Israelites could not completely wipe out, Solomon put them on forced labor, and they are still doing it to this day.

22 But from the Israelites, Solomon did not make any of them slaves. Instead, they were his warriors, his servants, his officials, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and horsemen.

23 These were the main officials in charge of Solomon’s projects: five hundred fifty of them overseeing the workers.

24 But Pharaoh’s daughter came up from David’s City to her own crib that Solomon built for her. That is when he finally finished the Millo.

25 Three times a year, Solomon would offer burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he built for the Lord, also burning incense with them on the altar that was before the Lord. So he kept the temple running smoothly.

26 King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion Geber, which is near Eloth on the Red Sea coast, in the land of Edom.

27 And Hiram sent his own dudes with the fleet, experienced sailors who knew the sea, along with Solomon’s servants.

28 They sailed to Ophir and brought back about sixteen tons of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.