Then Solomon, and all the men of Israel with him, went to the high place at Gibeon, because the Tent of meeting of God, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, had made in the waste land, was there.

But the ark of God had been moved by David from Kiriath-jearim to the place which he had made ready for it, for he had put up a tent for it at Jerusalem.

And Solomon went up there to the brass altar before the Lord at the Tent of meeting, offering on it a thousand burned offerings.

In that night God came to Solomon in a vision, and said to him, Say what I am to give you.

Give me now wisdom and knowledge, so that I may go out and come in before this people: for who is able to be the judge of this great people of yours?

So Solomon went back from the high place at Gibeon, from before the Tent of meeting, to Jerusalem; and he was king over Israel.

And Solomon got together war-carriages and horsemen; he had one thousand, four hundred carriages and twelve thousand horsemen, which he kept, some in the carriage-towns and some with the king at Jerusalem.

And Solomon's horses came out of Egypt; the king's traders got them from Kue at a price.

A war-carriage might be got from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty: they got them at the same rate for all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Aram.

Now it was Solomon's purpose to put up a house for the name of the Lord and a house for himself as king.

See! I am building a house for the name of the Lord my God, to be made holy to him, where perfumes of sweet spices will be burned before him, and the holy bread will be placed at all times, and burned offerings will be offered morning and evening, on the Sabbaths and at the new moons, and on the regular feasts of the Lord our God. This is a law for ever to Israel.

But who may have strength enough to make a house for him, seeing that the heaven and the heaven of heavens are not wide enough to be his resting-place? who am I then to make a house for him? But I am building it only for the burning of perfume before him.

And send me cedar-trees, cypress-trees and sandal-wood from Lebanon, for, to my knowledge, your servants are expert wood-cutters in Lebanon; and my servants will be with yours,

And I will give as food to your servants, the wood-cutters, twenty thousand measures of grain, and twenty thousand measures of barley and twenty thousand measures of wine and twenty thousand measures of oil.

The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, whose father was a man of Tyre, an expert worker in gold and silver and brass and iron, in stone and wood, in purple and blue and fair linen and red, trained in the cutting of every sort of ornament and the invention of every sort of design; let him be given a place among your expert workmen and those of my lord, your father David.

And we will have wood cut from Lebanon, as much as you have need of, and will send it to you on flat boats by sea to Joppa, and from there you may take it up to Jerusalem.

Then Solomon made a start at building the house of the Lord on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, where the Lord had been seen by his father David, in the place which David had made ready in the grain-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

And Solomon put the base of the house of God in position; by the older measure it was sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide.

And the covered way in front of the house was twenty cubits long, as wide as the house, and a hundred and twenty cubits high, all plated inside with the best gold.

And the greater house was roofed with cypress-wood, plated with the best gold and ornamented with designs of palm-trees and chains.

And he made the most holy place; it was twenty cubits long, and twenty cubits wide, like the greater house, and was plated all over with the best gold; six hundred talents were used for it.

And fifty shekels weight of gold was used for the nails. He had all the higher rooms plated with gold.

And in the same way, the wings of the other, five cubits long, were stretched out, one touching the wall and the other meeting the wing of the first winged one.

Then he made a brass altar, twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high.

And he made the great water-vessel of metal, round in form, measuring ten cubits across from edge to edge; it was five cubits high and thirty cubits round.

And under it was a design of flowers all round it, ten to a cubit, circling the water-vessel in two lines; they were made from liquid metal at the same time as the water-vessel.

It was supported on twelve oxen, three facing to the north, three to the west, three to the south, and three to the east, the water-vessel resting on top of them; their back parts were all turned to the middle of it.

It was as thick as a man's open hand, and the edge of it was curved like the edge of a cup, like a lily flower; it would take three thousand baths.

The great water-vessel with the twelve oxen under it.

So Solomon made all these vessels, a very great store of them, and the weight of the brass used was not measured.

The flowers and the vessels for the lights and the instruments used for them, were all of gold; it was the best gold.

Then Solomon sent for all the responsible men of Israel, all the chiefs of the tribes and the heads of families of the children of Israel, to come to Jerusalem and take the ark of the Lord's agreement up out of the town of David, which is Zion.

And all the men of Israel came together to the king at the feast in the seventh month.

And the priests took the ark of the Lord's agreement and put it in its place, in the inner room of the house, in the most holy place, under the wings of the winged ones.

Nothing was in the ark but the two flat stones which Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made an agreement with the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt.

Now when the priests had come out of the holy place, (for all the priests who were present had made themselves holy, not keeping to their divisions;

And the Levites who made the music, all of them, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and brothers, robed in fair linen, were in their places with their brass and corded instruments at the east side of the altar, and with them a hundred and twenty priests blowing horns;)

From the day when I took my people out of the land of Egypt, no town in all the tribes of Israel has been marked out by me for the building of a house for the resting-place of my name; and I took no man to be a ruler over my people Israel;

Now it was in the heart of my father David to put up a house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

But you yourself will not be the builder of the house; but your son, the offspring of your body, he it is who will put up a house for my name.

(For Solomon had made a brass stage, five cubits long, five cubits wide and three cubits high, and had put it in the middle of the open space; on this he took his place and went down on his knees before all the meeting of Israel, stretching out his hands to heaven.)

For 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 with men 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:

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:

Then give ear from 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 may see that this house which I have made 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 prayers to you turning their faces to this town of yours and to this house which I have put up for your name:

And if they take thought, in the land where they are prisoners, turning again to you, crying out in prayer to you in that land, and saying, We are sinners, we have done wrong, we have done evil;

Up! now, O Lord God, come back to your resting-place, you and the ark of your strength: let your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let your saints be glad in what is good.

So Solomon kept the feast at that time for seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great meeting, for the people had come together from the way into Hamath and from as far as the river of Egypt.

So Solomon came to the end of building the house of the Lord and the king's house; and everything which it was in his mind to make in the house of the Lord and for himself had been well done.

If, at my word, heaven is shut up, so that there is no rain, or if I send locusts on the land for its destruction, or if I send disease on my people;

For I have taken this house for myself and made it holy, so that my name may be there for ever; and my eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

Then I will have this people uprooted out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for my name, I will put away from before my eyes, and make it an example and a word of shame among all peoples.

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

Now at the end of twenty years, in which time Solomon had put up the house of the Lord and a house for himself,

And Solomon went to Hamath-zobah and overcame it.

And of Baalath, and all the store-towns which Solomon had, and the towns where he kept his war-carriages and his horse men, and everything which it was his pleasure to put up in Jerusalem and in Lebanon and in all the land under his rule.

Offering every day what had been ordered by Moses, on the Sabbaths and at the new moon and at the regular feasts three times a year, that is at the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tents.

And he gave the divisions of the priests their places for their work, as ordered by his father David, and to the Levites he gave their work of praise and waiting on the priests, to do what was needed day by day; and he gave the door-keepers their places in turn at every door; for so David, the man of God, had given orders.

And the food at his table, and all his servants seated there, and those who were waiting on him in their places, and their robes, and his wine-servants and their robes, and the burned offerings which he made in the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her.

But I had no faith in what was said about you, till I came and saw for myself; and truly, word was not given me of half your great wisdom; you are much greater than they said.

Praise be to the Lord your God whose pleasure it was to put you on the seat of his kingdom to be king for the Lord your God: because, in his love for Israel, it was the purpose of your God to make them strong for ever, he made you king over them, to be their judge in righteousness.

And the servants of Huram and the servants of Solomon, in addition to gold from Ophir, came back with sandal-wood and jewels.

And with the sandal-wood the king made steps for the house of the Lord and for the king's house, and instruments of music for the makers of melody; never before had such been seen in the land of Judah.

And King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatever she made request for, in addition to what she had taken to the king. So she went back to her country with her servants.

Now the weight of gold which came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents;

And in addition to what he got from traders of different sorts, all the kings of Arabia and the rulers of the country gave gold and silver to Solomon.

And King Solomon made two hundred body-covers of hammered gold, every one having six hundred shekels of gold in it.

There were six steps up to it, and a foot-rest of gold fixed to it, and arms on the two sides of the seat, with two lions at the side of the arms.

And twelve lions were placed on one side and on the other side on the six steps: there was nothing like it in any kingdom.

Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not recorded in the history of Nathan the prophet, and in the words of Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh, and in the visions of Iddo the seer about Jeroboam, the son of Nebat?

And when Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, had news of it, (for he was in Egypt where he had gone in flight from King Solomon,) he came back from Egypt.

Your father put a hard yoke on us: if you will make the conditions under which your father kept us down less cruel, and the weight of the yoke he put on us less hard, then we will be your servants.

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 he 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, but will you make it less; say to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's body;

If my father put a hard yoke on you, I will make it harder: my father gave you punishment with whips, but I will give you blows with snakes.

But gave them the answer put forward by the young men, saying, My father made your yoke hard, but I will make it harder; my father gave you punishment with whips, but I will give it with snakes.

And when all Israel saw that the king would give no attention to them, the people in answer said to the king, What part have we in David? what is our heritage in the son of Jesse? every man to your tents, O Israel; now see to your house, David. So all Israel went to their tents.

And after her he took Maacah, the daughter of Absalom; and she had Abijah and Attai and Ziza and Shelomith by him.

Maacah, the daughter of Absalom, was dearer to Rehoboam than all his wives and his servant-wives: (for he had eighteen wives and sixty servant-wives, and was the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.)

Rehoboam made Abijah, the son of Maacah, chief and ruler among his brothers, for it was his purpose to make him king.

With twelve hundred war-carriages and sixty thousand horsemen: and the people who came with him out of Egypt were more than might be numbered: Lubim and Sukkiim and Ethiopians.

And in their place King Rehoboam had other body-covers made of brass and gave them into the care of the captains of the armed men who were stationed at the door of the king's house.

So King Rehoboam made himself strong in Jerusalem and was ruling there. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king, and he was ruling for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the town which the Lord had made his out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there; and his mother's name was Naamah, an Ammonite woman.

Now the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not recorded in the words of Shemaiah the prophet and Iddo the seer? And there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days.

And Abijah went out to the fight with an army of men of war, four hundred thousand of his best men; and Jeroboam put his forces in line against him, eight hundred thousand of his best men of war.

Is it not clear to you that the Lord, the God of Israel, gave the rule over Israel to David and to his sons for ever, by an agreement made with salt?

And now it is your purpose to put yourselves against the authority which the Lord has put into the hands of the sons of David, and you are a very great number, and you have with you the gold oxen which Jeroboam made to be your gods.

And after driving out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, have you not made priests for yourselves as the people of other lands do? so that anyone who comes to make himself priest by offering an ox or seven sheep, may be a priest of those who are no gods.

By whom burned offerings and perfumes are sent up in smoke before the Lord every morning and every evening; and they put out the holy bread on its table and the gold support for the lights with its lights burning every evening; for we keep the orders given to us by the Lord our God, but you have gone away from him.

And now God is with us at our head, and his priests with their loud horns sounding against you. O children of Israel, do not make war on the Lord, the God of your fathers, for it will not go well for you.

But Jeroboam had put some of his men to make a surprise attack on them from the back, so some were facing Judah and others were stationed secretly at their back.

And Judah, turning their faces, saw that they were being attacked in front and at the back; and they gave a cry for help to the Lord, while the priests were sounding their horns.

And the men of Judah gave a loud cry; and at their cry, God put fear into Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.

So at that time the children of Israel were overcome, and the children of Judah got the better of them, because they put their faith in the Lord, the God of their fathers.

And the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his ways and his sayings, are recorded in the account of the prophet Iddo.

And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God;

For he took away the altars of strange gods and the high places, and had the upright stones broken and the wood pillars cut down;

And Zerah the Ethiopian, with an army of a million, and three hundred war-carriages, came out against them to Mareshah.