1 Kings 9
The Lord’s Response to Solomon
1So Solomon finished building the Temple of the Lord, as well as the royal palace. He completed everything he had planned to do. 2Then the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had done before at Gibeon. 3The Lord said to him,
Solomon’s Agreement with Hiram
10It took Solomon twenty years to build the Lord’s Temple and his own royal palace. At the end of that time, 11he gave twenty towns in the land of Galilee to King Hiram of Tyre. (Hiram had previously provided all the cedar and cypress timber and gold that Solomon had requested.) 12But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns Solomon had given him, he was not at all pleased with them. 13“What kind of towns are these, my brother?” he asked. So Hiram called that area Cabul (which means “worthless”), as it is still known today. 14Nevertheless, Hiram paid Solomon 9,000 pounds of gold.
1 Kings 9:14a Or For Hiram had paid.
1 Kings 9:14b Hebrew 120 talents [4,000 kilograms].
Solomon’s Many Achievements
15This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord’s Temple, the royal palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16(Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had attacked and captured Gezer, killing the Canaanite population and burning it down. He gave the city to his daughter as a wedding gift when she married Solomon. 17So Solomon rebuilt the city of Gezer.) He also built up the towns of Lower Beth-horon, 18Baalath, and Tamar in the wilderness within his land. 19He built towns as supply centers and constructed towns where his chariots and horses could be stationed. He built everything he desired in Jerusalem and Lebanon and throughout his entire realm.
1 Kings 9:15 Hebrew the millo; also in 9:24. The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.
1 Kings 9:18 An alternate reading in the Masoretic Text reads Tadmor.
1 Kings 9:19 Or and charioteers.
20There were still some people living in the land who were not Israelites, including Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 21These were descendants of the nations whom the people of Israel had not completely destroyed. So Solomon conscripted them as slaves, and they serve as forced laborers to this day. 22But Solomon did not conscript any of the Israelites for forced labor. Instead, he assigned them to serve as fighting men, government officials, officers and captains in his army, commanders of his chariots, and charioteers. 23Solomon appointed 550 of them to supervise the people working on his various projects.
1 Kings 9:21 The Hebrew term used here refers to the complete consecration of things or people to the Lord, either by destroying them or by giving them as an offering.
24Solomon moved his wife, Pharaoh’s daughter, from the City of David to the new palace he had built for her. Then he constructed the supporting terraces.
25Three times each year Solomon presented burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built for the Lord. He also burned incense to the Lord. And so he finished the work of building the Temple.
26King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, a port near Elath in the land of Edom, along the shore of the Red Sea.27Hiram sent experienced crews of sailors to sail the ships with Solomon’s men. 28They sailed to Ophir and brought back to Solomon some sixteen tons of gold.
1 Kings 9:26a As in Greek version (see also 2 Kgs 14:22; 16:6); Hebrew reads Eloth, a variant spelling of Elath.
1 Kings 9:26b Hebrew sea of reeds.
1 Kings 9:28 Hebrew 420 talents [14 metric tons].
Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Wheaton Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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