But he did not invite Nathan the prophet, Benaiah, the mighty men, and Solomon his brother.

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

So now come, please let me give you counsel and save your life and the life of your son Solomon.

Go at once to King David and say to him, ‘Have you not, my lord, O king, sworn to your maidservant, saying, “Surely Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he shall sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’

She said to him, “My lord, you swore to your maidservant by the Lord your God, saying, ‘Surely your son Solomon shall be king after me and he shall sit on my throne.’

He has sacrificed oxen and fatlings and sheep in abundance, and has invited all the sons of the king and Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the army, but he has not invited Solomon your servant.

Otherwise it will come about, as soon as my lord the king sleeps with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon will be considered offenders.”

But me, even me your servant, and Zadok the priest and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and your servant Solomon, he has not invited.

surely as I vowed to you by the Lord the God of Israel, saying, ‘Your son Solomon shall be king after me, and he shall sit on my throne in my place’; I will indeed do so this day.”

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

Let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there as king over Israel, and blow the trumpet and say, ‘Long live King Solomon!’

As the Lord has been with my lord the king, so may He be with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord King David!”

So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherethites, and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King David’s mule, and brought him to Gihon.

Zadok the priest then took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, “Long live King Solomon!”

But Jonathan replied to Adonijah, “No! Our lord King David has made Solomon king.

Besides, Solomon has even taken his seat on the throne of the kingdom.

Moreover, the king’s servants came to bless our lord King David, saying, ‘May your God make the name of Solomon better than your name and his throne greater than your throne!’ And the king bowed himself on the bed.

And Adonijah was afraid of Solomon, and he arose, went and took hold of the horns of the altar.

Now it was told Solomon, saying, “Behold, Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon, for behold, he has taken hold of the horns of the altar, saying, ‘Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.’”

Solomon said, “If he is a worthy man, not one of his hairs will fall to the ground; but if wickedness is found in him, he will die.”

So King Solomon sent, and they brought him down from the altar. And he came and prostrated himself before King Solomon, and Solomon said to him, “Go to your house.”

As David’s time to die drew near, he charged Solomon his son, saying,

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

Now Adonijah the son of Haggith came to Bathsheba the mother of Solomon. And she said, “Do you come peacefully?” And he said, “Peacefully.”

Then he said, “Please speak to Solomon the king, for he will not refuse you, that he may give me Abishag the Shunammite as a wife.”

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah. And the king arose to meet her, bowed before her, and sat on his throne; then he had a throne set for the king’s mother, and she sat on his right.

King Solomon answered and said to his mother, “And why are you asking Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him also the kingdom—for he is my older brother—even for him, for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah!”

Then King Solomon swore by the Lord, saying, “May God do so to me and more also, if Adonijah has not spoken this word against his own life.

So King Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; and he fell upon him so that he died.

So Solomon dismissed Abiathar from being priest to the Lord, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord, which He had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.

It was told King Solomon that Joab had fled to the tent of the Lord, and behold, he is beside the altar. Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go, fall upon him.”

It was told Solomon that Shimei had gone from Jerusalem to Gath, and had returned.

But King Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before the Lord forever.”

So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and he went out and fell upon him so that he died.Thus the kingdom was established in the hands of Solomon.

Then Solomon formed a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem.

Now Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David, except he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.

The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place; Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, “Ask what you wish Me to give you.”

Then Solomon said, “You have shown great lovingkindness to Your servant David my father, according as he walked before You in truth and righteousness and uprightness of heart toward You; and You have reserved for him this great lovingkindness, that You have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day.

It was pleasing in the sight of the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing.

Then Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and made peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.

Now King Solomon was king over all Israel.

Solomon had twelve deputies over all Israel, who provided for the king and his household; each man had to provide for a month in the year.

Ben-abinadab, in all the height of Dor (Taphath the daughter of Solomon was his wife);

Ahimaaz, in Naphtali (he also married Basemath the daughter of Solomon);

Now Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the River to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt; they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty kors of fine flour and sixty kors of meal,

So Judah and Israel lived in safety, every man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.

Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horsemen.

Those deputies provided for King Solomon and all who came to King Solomon’s table, each in his month; they left nothing lacking.

Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore.

Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.

Men came from all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

Now Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon, when he heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father, for Hiram had always been a friend of David.

Then Solomon sent word to Hiram, saying,

When Hiram heard the words of Solomon, he rejoiced greatly and said, “Blessed be the Lord today, who has given to David a wise son over this great people.”

So Hiram sent word to Solomon, saying, “I have heard the message which you have sent me; I will do what you desire concerning the cedar and cypress timber.

So Hiram gave Solomon as much as he desired of the cedar and cypress timber.

Solomon then gave Hiram 20,000 kors of wheat as food for his household, and twenty kors of beaten oil; thus Solomon would give Hiram year by year.

The Lord gave wisdom to Solomon, just as He promised him; and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them made a covenant.

Now King Solomon levied forced laborers from all Israel; and the forced laborers numbered 30,000 men.

Now Solomon had 70,000 transporters, and 80,000 hewers of stone in the mountains,

besides Solomon’s 3,300 chief deputies who were over the project and who ruled over the people who were doing the work.

So Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites cut them, and prepared the timbers and the stones to build the house.

Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.

As for the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, its length was sixty cubits and its width twenty cubits and its height thirty cubits.

Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon saying,

So Solomon built the house and finished it.

So Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold. And he drew chains of gold across the front of the inner sanctuary, and he overlaid it with gold.

Now Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house.

His house where he was to live, the other court inward from the hall, was of the same workmanship. He also made a house like this hall for Pharaoh’s daughter, whom Solomon had married.

Now King Solomon sent and brought Hiram from Tyre.

He was a widow’s son from the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in bronze; and he was filled with wisdom and understanding and skill for doing any work in bronze. So he came to King Solomon and performed all his work.

Now Hiram made the basins and the shovels and the bowls. So Hiram finished doing all the work which he performed for King Solomon in the house of the Lord:

and the pails and the shovels and the bowls; even all these utensils which Hiram made for King Solomon in the house of the Lord were of polished bronze.

Solomon left all the utensils unweighed, because they were too many; the weight of the bronze could not be ascertained.

Solomon made all the furniture which was in the house of the Lord: the golden altar and the golden table on which was the bread of the Presence;

Thus all the work that King Solomon performed in the house of the Lord was finished. And Solomon brought in the things dedicated by his father David, the silver and the gold and the utensils, and he put them in the treasuries of the house of the Lord.

Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers’ households of the sons of Israel, to King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the city of David, which is Zion.

All the men of Israel assembled themselves to King Solomon at the feast, in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.

And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who were assembled to him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen they could not be counted or numbered.

Then Solomon said,
“The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick cloud.

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven.

When Solomon had finished praying this entire prayer and supplication to the Lord, he arose from before the altar of the Lord, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread toward heaven.

Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to the Lord, 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the sons of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord.

So Solomon observed 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, for seven days and seven more days, even fourteen days.

Now it came about when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord, and the king’s house, and all that Solomon desired to do,

that the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon.

It came about at the end of twenty years in which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the Lord and the king’s house

(Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold according to all his desire), then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.

So Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, and they did not please him.

Now this is the account of the forced labor which King Solomon levied to build the house of the Lord, his own house, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, and killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.

So Solomon rebuilt Gezer and the lower Beth-horon

and all the storage cities which Solomon had, even the cities for his chariots and the cities for his horsemen, and all that it pleased Solomon to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land under his rule.

their descendants who were left after them in the land whom the sons of Israel were unable to destroy utterly, from them Solomon levied forced laborers, even to this day.

But Solomon did not make slaves of the sons of Israel; for they were men of war, his servants, his princes, his captains, his chariot commanders, and his horsemen.

These were the chief officers who were over Solomon’s work, five hundred and fifty, who ruled over the people doing the work.

As soon as Pharaoh’s daughter came up from the city of David to her house which Solomon had built for her, then he built the Millo.

Now three times in a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built to the Lord, burning incense with them on the altar which was before the Lord. So he finished the house.