So his servants said to him: “Let us search for a young virgin for my lord the king. She is to attend the king and be his caregiver. She is to lie by your side so that my lord the king will get warm.”

but Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei, Rei, and David’s warriors did not side with Adonijah.

Then Nathan said to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah son of Haggith has become king and our lord David does not know it?

Go, approach King David and say to him, ‘My lord the king, did you not swear to your servant: Your son Solomon is to become king after me, and he is the one who is to sit on my throne? So why has Adonijah become king?’

She replied, “My lord, you swore to your servant by the Lord your God, ‘Your son Solomon is to become king after me, and he is the one who is to sit on my throne.’

Now, my lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you to tell them who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him.

“My lord the king,” Nathan said, “did you say, ‘Adonijah is to become king after me, and he is the one who is to sit on my throne’?

I’m certain my lord the king would not have let this happen without letting your servant know who will sit on my lord the king’s throne after him.”

The king swore an oath and said, “As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from every difficulty,

just as I swore to you by the Lord God of Israel: Your son Solomon is to become king after me, and he is the one who is to sit on my throne in my place, that is exactly what I will do this very day.”

Bathsheba bowed with her face to the ground, paying homage to the king, and said, “May my lord King David live forever!”

King David then said, “Call in Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada for me.” So they came into the king’s presence.

The king said to them, “Take my servants with you, have my son Solomon ride on my own mule, and take him down to Gihon.

You are to come up after him, and he is to come in and sit on my throne. He is the one who is to become king in my place; he is the one I have commanded to be ruler over Israel and Judah.”

Adonijah and all the invited guests who were with him heard the noise as they finished eating. Joab heard the sound of the ram’s horn and said, “Why is the town in such an uproar?”

He was still speaking when Jonathan son of Abiathar the priest, suddenly arrived. Adonijah said, “Come in, for you are an excellent man, and you must be bringing good news.”

Solomon has even taken his seat on the royal throne.

And the king went on to say this: ‘May the Lord God of Israel be praised! Today He has provided one to sit on my throne, and I am a witness.’”

Then Solomon said, “If he is a man of character, not a single hair of his will fall to the ground, but if evil is found in him, he dies.”

So King Solomon sent for him, and they took him down from the altar. He came and paid homage to King Solomon, and Solomon said to him, “Go to your home.”

Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his kingship was firmly established.

“You know the kingship was mine,” he said. “All Israel expected me to be king, but then the kingship was turned over to my brother, for the Lord gave it to him.

So now I have just one request of you; don’t turn me down.”

She said to him, “Go on.”

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him about Adonijah. The king stood up to greet her, bowed to her, sat down on his throne, and had a throne placed for the king’s mother. So she sat down at his right hand.

Then she said, “I have just one small request of you. Don’t turn me down.”

“Go ahead and ask, mother,” the king replied, “for I won’t turn you down.”

So she said, “Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to your brother Adonijah as a wife.”

The king said to Abiathar the priest, “Go to your fields in Anathoth. Even though you deserve to die, I will not put you to death today, since you carried the ark of the Lord God in the presence of my father David and you suffered through all that my father suffered.”

So Benaiah went to the tabernacle and said to Joab, “This is what the king says: ‘Come out!’”

But Joab said, “No, for I will die here.”

So Benaiah took a message back to the king, “This is what Joab said, and this is how he answered me.”

The king said to him, “Do just as he says. Strike him down and bury him in order to remove from me and from my father’s house the blood that Joab shed without just cause.

Then the king summoned Shimei and said to him, “Build a house for yourself in Jerusalem and live there, but don’t leave there and go anywhere else.

Shimei said to the king, “The sentence is fair; your servant will do as my lord the king has spoken.” And Shimei lived in Jerusalem for a long time.

So Shimei saddled his donkey and set out to Achish at Gath to search for his slaves. He went and brought them back from Gath.

So the king summoned Shimei and said to him, “Didn’t I make you swear by the Lord and warn you, saying, ‘On the day you leave and go anywhere else, know for sure that you will certainly die’? And you said to me, ‘The sentence is fair; I will obey.’

The king also said, “You yourself know all the evil that you did to my father David. Therefore, the Lord has brought back your evil on your head,

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask. What should I give you?”

And Solomon replied, “You have shown great and faithful love to Your servant, my father David, because he walked before You in faithfulness, righteousness, and integrity. You have continued this great and faithful love for him by giving him a son to sit on his throne, as it is today.

So God said to him, “Because you have requested this and did not ask for long life or riches for yourself, or the death of your enemies, but you asked discernment for yourself to understand justice,

One woman said, “Please my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was in the house.

She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while your servant was asleep. She laid him at her breast, and she put her dead son in my arms.

“No,” the other woman said. “My son is the living one; your son is the dead one.”

The first woman said, “No, your son is the dead one; my son is the living one.” So they argued before the king.

Solomon said, “Cut the living boy in two and give half to one and half to the other.”

The woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she felt great compassion for her son. “My lord, give her the living baby,” she said, “but please don’t have him killed!”

But the other one said, “He will not be mine or yours. Cut him in two!”

Baana son of Ahilud, in Taanach, Megiddo, and all Beth-shean which is beside Zarethan below Jezreel, from Beth-shean to Abel-meholah, as far as the other side of Jokmeam;

When Hiram heard Solomon’s words, he greatly rejoiced and said, “May the Lord be praised today! He has given David a wise son to be over this great people!”

He then built a chambered structure along the temple wall, encircling the walls of the temple, that is, the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary. And he made side chambers all around.

The door for the lowest side chamber was on the right side of the temple. They went up a stairway to the middle chamber, and from the middle to the third.

He also made two capitals of cast bronze to set on top of the pillars; 7½ feet was the height of the first capital, and 7½ feet was also the height of the second capital.

He set up the pillars at the portico of the sanctuary: he set up the right pillar and named it Jachin; then he set up the left pillar and named it Boaz.

He set five water carts on the right side of the temple and five on the left side. He put the reservoir near the right side of the temple toward the southeast.

Then Solomon said:

The Lord said that He would dwell in thick darkness.

He said:

May the Lord God of Israel be praised!
He spoke directly to my father David,
and He has fulfilled the promise by His power.
He said,

But the Lord said to my father David,
“Since it was your desire to build a temple for My name,
you have done well to have this desire.

The Lord has fulfilled what He promised.
I have taken the place of my father David,
and I sit on the throne of Israel, as the Lord promised.
I have built the temple for the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel.

He said:

Lord God of Israel,
there is no God like You
in heaven above or on earth below,
keeping the gracious covenant
with Your servants who walk before You
with their whole heart.

Therefore, Lord God of Israel,
keep what You promised
to Your servant, my father David:
You will never fail to have a man
to sit before Me on the throne of Israel,
if only your sons guard their walk before Me
as you have walked before Me.

so that Your eyes may watch over this temple night and day,
toward the place where You said:
My name will be there,
and so that You may hear the prayer
that Your servant prays toward this place.

For You, Lord God, have set them apart as Your inheritance
from all the people on earth,
as You spoke through Your servant Moses
when You brought their ancestors out of Egypt.

“May the Lord be praised! He has given rest to His people Israel according to all He has said. Not one of all the good promises He made through His servant Moses has failed.

The Lord said to him:

I have heard your prayer and petition you have made before Me. I have consecrated this temple you have built, to put My name there forever; My eyes and My heart will be there at all times.

If you or your sons turn away from following Me and do not keep My commands—My statutes that I have set before you—and if you go and serve other gods and worship them,

So he said, “What are these towns you’ve given me, my brother?” So he called them the Land of Cabul, as they are still called today.

She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your words and about your wisdom is true.

The throne had six steps; there was a rounded top at the back of the throne, armrests on either side of the seat, and two lions standing beside the armrests.

Solomon did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, and unlike his father David, he did not completely follow Yahweh.

Then the Lord said to Solomon, “Since you have done this and did not keep My covenant and My statutes, which I commanded you, I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant.

Hadad and his men set out from Midian and went to Paran. They took men with them from Paran and went to Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, who gave Hadad a house, ordered that he be given food, and gave him land.

When Hadad heard in Egypt that David rested with his fathers and that Joab, the commander of the army, was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, “Let me leave, so I can go to my own country.”

and said to Jeroboam, “Take 10 pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘I am about to tear the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand. I will give you 10 tribes,

“‘After that, if you obey all I command you, walk in My ways, and do what is right in My sight in order to keep My statutes and My commands as My servant David did, I will be with you. I will build you a lasting dynasty just as I built for David, and I will give you Israel.

He asked them, “What message do you advise that we send back to these people who said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’?”

Then the young men who had grown up with him told him, “This is what you should say to these people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you, make it lighter on us!’ This is what you should tell them: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins!

‘This is what the Lord says: You are not to march up and fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Each of you must return home, for I have done this.’”

So they listened to what the Lord said and went back as He had told them.

Jeroboam said to himself, “The way things are going now, the kingdom might return to the house of David.

So the king sought advice.

Then he made two golden calves, and he said to the people, “Going to Jerusalem is too difficult for you. Israel, here is your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

He set up one in Bethel, and put the other in Dan.

Jeroboam also built shrines on the high places and set up priests from every class of people who were not Levites.

Jeroboam made a festival in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the festival in Judah. He offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had set up. He also stationed the priests in Bethel for the high places he had set up.

He offered sacrifices on the altar he had set up in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. He chose this month on his own. He made a festival for the Israelites, offered sacrifices on the altar, and burned incense.

He gave a sign that day. He said, “This is the sign that the Lord has spoken: ‘The altar will now be ripped apart, and the ashes that are on it will be poured out.’”

When the king heard the word that the man of God had cried out against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar and said, “Arrest him!” But the hand he stretched out against him withered, and he could not pull it back to himself.

Then their father said to them, “Which way did he go?” His sons had seen the way taken by the man of God who had come from Judah.

Then he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him, and he got on it.

He followed the man of God and found him sitting under an oak tree. He asked him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”

“I am,” he said.

Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.”

He said to him, “I am also a prophet like you. An angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord: ‘Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.’” The old prophet deceived him,

but you went back and ate bread and drank water in the place that He said to you, “Do not eat bread and do not drink water”— your corpse will never reach the grave of your fathers.’”

When the prophet who had brought him back from his way heard about it, he said, “He is the man of God who disobeyed the command of the Lord. The Lord has given him to the lion, and it has mauled and killed him, according to the word of the Lord that He spoke to him.”

After he had buried him, he said to his sons, “When I die, you must bury me in the grave where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones,

After all this Jeroboam did not repent of his evil way but again set up priests for the high places from every class of people. He ordained whoever so desired it, and they became priests of the high places.

Jeroboam said to his wife, “Go disguise yourself, so they won’t know that you’re Jeroboam’s wife, and go to Shiloh. Ahijah the prophet is there; it was he who told about me becoming king over this people.

But the Lord had said to Ahijah, “Jeroboam’s wife is coming soon to ask you about her son, for he is sick. You are to say such and such to her. When she arrives, she will be disguised.”

When Ahijah heard the sound of her feet entering the door, he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam! Why are you disguised? I have bad news for you.

Anyone who belongs to Jeroboam and dies in the city,
the dogs will eat,
and anyone who dies in the field,
the birds of the sky will eat,
for the Lord has said it!’

Nadab did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of his father and the sin he had caused Israel to commit.

He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of Jeroboam and the sin he had caused Israel to commit.

Through the prophet Jehu son of Hanani the word of the Lord also came against Baasha and against his house because of all the evil he had done in the Lord’s sight, provoking Him with the work of his hands and being like the house of Jeroboam, and because Baasha had struck down the house of Jeroboam.

because of the sin he committed by doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and by following the example of Jeroboam and the sin he caused Israel to commit.

Omri did what was evil in the Lord’s sight; he did more evil than all who were before him.

But Ahab son of Omri did what was evil in the Lord’s sight more than all who were before him.

He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he had built in Samaria.