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Solomon had finished building the House of the Lord and the royal palace, and all that Solomon had set his heart to do, 2 the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The Lord said to him,
“I have heard your prayer and supplication you have made before Me. I have consecrated this temple which you have built, to put My Name there forever. My eyes and My heart will always be there.
4“As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing everything I have commanded you, and if you will keep My statutes and My ordinances, 5 then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised your father David when I said, ‘You will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel’.
6“But if you or your sons turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes that I have set before you, but go off to serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut Israel off from the land I have given them, and I will reject this temple that I have consecrated for My Name. Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all the peoples. 8 And as for this temple, though it is now exalted, all who pass by will be astonished and will hiss. They will say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ 9 Then people will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and they have adopted other gods, and worshipped and served them. That is why the Lord has brought all this disaster on them’.”
10 At the end of twenty years during which Solomon had built the two houses, the House of the Lord and the royal palace— 11 since Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with all the cedar and cypress logs and gold he wanted—King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee. 12 But when Hiram went from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them. 13 So he said, “What kind if towns are these that you have given me, my brother?” So he called them the Land of Cabul, the name they are stilled known by to this day. 14 However, Hiram had sent a hundred and twenty talents of gold to the king.
15 This is the account of the forced labour that King Solomon conscripted to build the House of the Lord, his own palace, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 (Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He then set it on fire, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and gave it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife. 17 Then Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Lower Beth-horon, 18 Baalath, and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land of Judah, 19 and all Solomon’s store cities, and the cities for his chariots and cavalry—whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, Lebanon, and throughout all the lands of his dominion.
20 All the people who remained from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites— 21 that is, their descendants who were still left in the land after them, whom the Israelites could not completely wipe out—these Solomon enslaved for forced labour, as it is to this day. 22 But Solomon did not make slaves of any of the Israelites; they were his soldiers, his servants, his commanders, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and his cavalry. 23 These were the chief officers who were in charge of Solomon’s work—five hundred and fifty, who were in charge of the people doing the work.
24 After Pharaoh’s daughter moved from the City of David to the palace that Solomon built for her, he built the Millo.
25 Three times a year Solomon sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar he had built for the Lord, and he burned incense with them before the Lord. So he completed the termple.
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 Hiram sent his servants with the fleet, sailors who knew the sea, to serve alongside Solomon’s servants. 28 They sailed to Ophir and brought back gold from there—four hundred and twenty talents—which they delivered to King Solomon.