Solomon & The Temple

that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and his ordinances, which he commanded our fathers.

Let these my words, with which I have made supplication before the LORD, be near to the LORD our God day and night, that he may maintain the cause of his servant, and the cause of his people Israel, as every day shall require;

that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD, he is God. There is no one else.

“Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day.”

The king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before the LORD.

Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to the LORD, two and twenty thousand head of cattle, and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the LORD’s house.

The same day the king made the middle of the court holy that was before the LORD’s house; for there he offered the burnt offering, and the meal offering, and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar that was before the LORD was too little to receive the burnt offering, and the meal offering, and the fat of the peace offerings.

So Solomon held the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly, from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of Egypt, before the LORD our God, seven days and seven days, even fourteen days.

On the eighth day he sent the people away; and they blessed the king, and went to their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the LORD had shown to David his servant, and to Israel his people.

When Solomon had finished the building of the LORD’s house, and the king’s house, and all Solomon’s desire which he was pleased to do,

the LORD appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.

The LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your supplication, that you have made before me. I have made this house holy, which you have built, to put my name there forever; and my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually.

As for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father 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 ordinances;

then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, according as I promised to David your father, saying, ‘There shall not fail you a man on the throne of Israel.’

But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but shall go and serve other gods, and worship them;

then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

Though this house is so high, yet shall everyone who passes by it be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land, and to this house?’

and they shall answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold of other gods, and worshiped them, and served them. Therefore the LORD has brought all this evil on them.’”

At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, the LORD’s house and the king’s house

(now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar trees and fir trees, and with gold, according to all his desire), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.

Hiram came out of Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they didn’t please him.

He said, “What cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” He called them the land of Cabul to this day.

Hiram sent to the king one hundred twenty talents of gold.

This is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised, to build the LORD’s house, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.

Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, and taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites who lived in the city, and given it for a portion to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.