Solomon & The Temple

The weight of gold that came to Solomon each year was 666 talents,

not including the revenue from the merchants, traders, and all the Arabian kings and governors of the land.

King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold; six hundred shekels of gold went into each shield.

He also made three hundred small shields of hammered gold; three minas of gold went into each shield. And the king put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon.

Additionally, the king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with pure gold.

The throne had six steps, and its back had a rounded top. There were armrests on both sides of the seat, with a lion standing beside each armrest.

Twelve lions stood on the six steps, one at either end of each step. Nothing like this had ever been made for any kingdom.

All King Solomon’s drinking cups were gold, and all the utensils of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. There was no silver, because it was accounted as nothing in the days of Solomon.

For the king had the ships of Tarshish at sea with Hiram’s fleet, and once every three years the ships of Tarshish would arrive bearing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.

So King Solomon surpassed all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.

The whole world sought an audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom that God had put in his heart.

Year after year, each visitor would bring his tribute: articles of silver and gold, clothing, weapons, spices, horses, and mules.

Solomon accumulated 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses, which he stationed in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.

The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as abundant as sycamore in the foothills.

Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and Kue; the royal merchants purchased them from Kue.

A chariot could be imported from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. Likewise, they exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Aram.

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh—women of Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Sidon, as well as Hittite women.

These women were from the nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, for surely they will turn your hearts after their gods.” Yet Solomon clung to these women in love.

He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines—and his wives turned his heart away.

For when Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the LORD his God, as his father David had been.

Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

So Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD; unlike his father David, he did not follow the LORD completely.

At that time on a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites.

He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

Now the LORD grew angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.