Has this thing been done by my lord the king, without giving word to your servants who was to be placed on my lord the king's seat after him?

As I took an oath to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, saying, Certainly Solomon your son will become king after me, seated on my seat in my place; so will I do this day.

And it came to the ears of Adonijah and all the guests who were with him, when their meal was ended. And Joab, hearing the sound of the horn, said, What is the reason of this noise as if the town was worked up?

And Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet put the holy oil on him and made him king in Gihon; and they came back from there with joy, and the town was all worked up. This is the noise which has come to your ears.

Then the king said, May the God of Israel be praised, who has given one of my seed to be king in my place this day and has let my eyes see it.

Now by the living Lord, who has given me my place on the seat of David my father, and made me one of a line of kings, as he gave me his word, truly Adonijah will be put to death this day.

And news of this came to Joab; for Joab had been one of Adonijah's supporters, though he had not been on Absalom's side. Then Joab went in flight to the Tent of the Lord, and put his hands on the horns of the altar.

But all this time the people were making their offerings in the high places, because no house had been put up to the name of the Lord till those days.

And Solomon said, Great was your mercy to David my father, as his life before you was true and upright and his heart was true to you; and you have kept for him this greatest mercy, a son to take his place this day.

Give your servant, then, a wise heart for judging your people, able to see what is good and what evil; for who is able to be the judge of this great people?

And God said to him, Because your request is for this thing, and not for long life for yourself or for wealth or for the destruction of your haters, but for wisdom to be a judge of causes;

And with this I have given you what you made no request for: wealth and honour, so that no king was ever your equal.

And one of them said, O my lord, I and this woman are living in the same house; and I gave birth to a child by her side in the house.

And three days after the birth of my child, this woman had a child: we were together, no other-person was with us in the house but we two only.

In the night, this woman, sleeping on her child, was the cause of its death.

And news of this decision which the king had made went through all Israel; and they had fear of the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to give decisions.

For he had authority over all the country on this side of the River, from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings on this side of the River; and he had peace round him on every side.

And these words of Solomon made Hiram glad, and he said, Now may the Lord be praised who has given to David a wise son to be king over this great people.

And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of grain, as food for his people, and twenty measures of clear oil; this he did every year.

About this house which you are building: if you will keep my laws and give effect to my decisions and be guided by my rules, I will give effect to my word which I gave to David your father.

Then he made a covered room for his high seat when he gave decisions; this was the covered room of judging; it was covered with cedar-wood from floor to roof.

And the bases were made in this way; their sides were square, fixed in a framework;

All the ten bases were made in this way, after the same design, of the same size and form.

The rods were so long that their ends were seen from the holy place, in front of the inmost room; but they were not seen from outside: and there they are to this day.

And you have kept the word which you gave to your servant David, my father; with your mouth you said it and with your hand you have made it come true this day.

But is it truly possible that God may be housed on earth? see, heaven and the heaven of heavens are not wide enough to be your resting-place; how much less this house which I have made!

Still, let your heart be turned to the prayer of your servant, O Lord God, and to his prayer for grace; give ear to the cry and the prayer which your servant sends up to you this day;

That your eyes may be open to this house night and day, to this place of which you have said, My name will be there; hearing the prayer which your servant may make, turning to this place.

Give ear to the prayers of your servant, and the prayers of your people Israel, when they make their prayers, turning to this place; give ear in heaven your living-place, and hearing, have mercy.

If a man does wrong to his neighbour, and has to take an oath, and comes before your altar to take his oath in this house:

When your people Israel are overcome in war, because of their sin against you; if they are turned to you again, honouring your name, making prayers to you and requesting your grace in this house:

When heaven is shut up and there is no rain, because of their sin against you; if they make prayers with their faces turned to this place, honouring your name and turning away from their sin when you send trouble on them:

Whatever prayer or request for your grace is made by any man, or by all your people Israel, whatever his trouble may be, whose hands are stretched out to this house:

(For they will have news of your great name and your strong hand and your out-stretched arm;) when he comes to make his prayer, turning to this house:

Give ear in heaven your living-place, and give him his desire, whatever it may be; so that all the peoples of the earth may have knowledge of your name, worshipping you as do your people Israel, and that they may see that this house which I have put up is truly named by your name.

If your people go out to war against their attackers, by whatever way you may send them, if they make their prayer to the Lord, turning their faces to this town of yours and to this house which I have made for your name:

And with all their heart and soul are turned again to you, in the land of those who took them prisoners, and make their prayer to you, turning their eyes to this land which you gave to their fathers, and to the town which you took for yourself, and the house which I made for your name:

Then let your hearts be without sin before the Lord our God, walking in his laws and keeping his orders as at this day.

And the Lord said to him, Your prayers and your requests for grace have come to my ears: I have made holy this house which you have made, and I have put my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

Then I will have Israel cut off from the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for myself, I will put away from before my eyes; and Israel will be a public example, and a word of shame among all peoples.

And this house will become a mass of broken walls, and everyone who goes by will be overcome with wonder at it and make whistling sounds; and they will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land and to this house?

And their answer will be, Because they were turned away from the Lord their God, who took their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they took for themselves other gods and gave them worship and became their servants: that is why the Lord has sent all this evil on them.

And he said, What sort of towns are these which you have given me, my brother? So they were named the land of Cabul, to this day.

Now, this was the way of Solomon's system of forced work for the building of the Lord's house and of the king's house, and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Megiddo and Gezer. ...

Their children who were still in the land, and whom the children of Israel had not been able to put to complete destruction, them did Solomon put to forced work, to this day.

And from the sandal-wood the king made pillars for the house of the Lord, and for the king's house, and instruments of music for the makers of melody: never has such sandal-wood been seen to this day.

And had given him orders about this very thing, that he was not to go after other gods; but he did not keep the orders of the Lord.

So the Lord said to Solomon, Because you have done this, and have not kept my agreement and my laws, which I gave you, I will take the kingdom away from you by force and will give it to your servant.

He was a trouble to Israel all through the days of Solomon. And this is the damage Hadad did: he was cruel to Israel while he was ruler over Edom.

The way in which his hand came to be lifted up against the king was this: Solomon was building the Millo and making good the damaged parts of the town of his father David;

And he said to Jeroboam, Take ten of the parts, for this is what the Lord has said: See, I will take the kingdom away from Solomon by force, and will give ten tribes to you;

(So that I may send trouble for this on the seed of David, but not for ever.)

Then King Rehoboam took the opinion of the old men who had been with Solomon his father when he was living, and said, In your opinion, what answer am I to give to this people?

And they said to him, If you will be a servant to this people today, caring for them and giving them a gentle answer, then they will be your servants for ever.

And said to them, What is your opinion? What answer are we to give to this people who have said to me, Make less the weight of the yoke which your father put on us?

And the young men of his generation said to him, This is the answer to give to the people who came to you saying, Your father put a hard yoke on us; will you make it less? say to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's body;

So the king did not give ear to the people; and this came about by the purpose of the Lord, so that what he had said by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam, son of Nebat, might be effected.

So Israel was turned away from the family of David to this day.

The Lord has said, You are not to go to war against your brothers, the children of Israel; go back, every man to his house, because this thing is my purpose. So they gave ear to the word of the Lord, and went back, as the Lord had said.

And this became a sin in Israel; for the people went to give worship to the one at Beth-el, and to the other at Dan.

The same day he gave them a sign, saying, This is the sign which the Lord has given: See, the altar will be broken and the burned waste on it overturned.

And the altar was broken and the burned waste on it overturned; this was the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.

But the man of God said to the king, Even if you gave me half of all you have, I would not go in with you, and I would not take food or a drink of water in this place;

But he said, I may not go back with you or go into your house; and I will not take food or a drink of water with you in this place;

But have come back, and have taken food and water in this place where he said you were to take no food or water; your dead body will not be put to rest with your fathers.

And when he had put it to rest, he said to his sons, When I am dead, then you are to put my body into the earth with the body of this man of God, and put me by his bones so that my bones may be kept safe with his bones.

After this Jeroboam, not turning back from his evil ways, still made priests for his altars from among all the people; he made a priest of anyone desiring it, so that there might be priests of the high places.

And this became a sin in the family of Jeroboam, causing it to be cut off and sent to destruction from the face of the earth.

And Jeroboam said to his wife, Now come, put on different clothing so that you may not seem to be the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh; see, Ahijah is there, the prophet who said I would be king over this people.

And even now the hand of the Lord has come down on Israel, shaking it like a river-grass in the water; and, uprooting Israel from this good land, which he gave to their fathers, he will send them this way and that on the other side of the River; because they have made for themselves images, moving the Lord to wrath.

And more than this, there were those in the land who were used for sex purposes in the worship of the gods, doing the same disgusting crimes as the nations which the Lord had sent out before the children of Israel.

For this is the word of the Lord, the God of Israel: The store of meal will not come to an end, and the bottle will never be without oil, till the day when the Lord sends rain on the earth.

Now after this, the son of the woman of the house became ill, so ill that there was no breath in him.

And stretching herself out on the child three times, he made his prayer to the Lord, saying, O Lord my God, be pleased to let this child's life come back to him again.

Then at the time of the offering, Elijah the prophet came near and said, O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be seen this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things by your order.

Give me an answer, O Lord, give me an answer, so that this people may see that you are God, and that you have made their hearts come back again.

Then Jezebel sent a servant to Elijah, saying, May the gods' punishment be on me if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.

But I will send my servants to you tomorrow about this time, to make a search through your house and the houses of your people, and everything which is pleasing in your eyes they will take away in their hands.

Then the king of Israel sent for all the responsible men of the land, and said, Now will you take note and see the evil purpose of this man: he sent for my wives and my children, my silver and my gold, and I did not keep them back.

So he said to the representatives of Ben-hadad, Say to my lord the king, All the orders you sent the first time I will do; but this thing I may not do. And the representatives went back with this answer.

Now when this answer was given to Ben-hadad, he was drinking with the kings in the tents, and he said to his men, Take up your positions. So they put themselves in position for attacking the town.

Then a prophet came up to Ahab, king of Israel, and said, The Lord says, Have you seen all this great army? See, I will give it into your hands today, and you will see that I am the Lord.

This is what you have to do: take away the kings from their positions, and put captains in their places;

And a man of God came up and said to the king of Israel, The Lord says, Because the Aramaeans have said, The Lord is a god of the hills and not of the valleys; I will give all this great army into your hands, and you will see that I am the Lord.

And Ben-hadad said to him, The towns my father took from your father I will give back; and you may make streets for yourself in Damascus as my father did in Samaria. And as for me, at the price of this agreement you will let me go. So he made an agreement with him and let him go.

And when the king went by, crying out to him he said, Your servant went out into the fight; and a man came out to me with another man and said, Keep this man: if by any chance he gets away, your life will be the price of his life, or you will have to give a talent of silver in payment.

But while your servant was turning this way and that, he was gone. Then the king of Israel said to him, You are responsible; you have given the decision against yourself.

And say, It is the king's order that this man is to be put in prison and given prison food till I come again in peace.

So when the captains of the war-carriages saw Jehoshaphat, they said, Truly, this is the king of Israel; and turning against him, they came round him, but Jehoshaphat gave a cry.