So David made selection of the disease; and the time was the days of the grain-cutting, when the disease came among the people, causing the death of seventy thousand men from Dan as far as Beer-sheba.

And the king took an oath, and said, By the living Lord, who has been my saviour from all my troubles,

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.

So King Solomon sent, and they took him down from the altar. And he came and gave honour to King Solomon; and Solomon said to him, Go to your house.

But be good to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and let them be guests at your table; for so they came to me when I went in flight from Absalom your brother.

But do not let him be free from punishment, for you are a wise man; and it will be clear to you what you have to do with him; see that his white head goes down to the underworld in blood.

And the king said, Do as he has said and make an attack on him there, and put his body into the earth; so that you may take away from me and from my family the blood of one put to death by Joab without cause.

So their blood will be on the head of Joab, and on the head of his seed for ever; but for David and his seed and his family and the seat of his kingdom, there will be peace for ever from the Lord.

Then Shimei got up, and making ready his ass, he went to Gath, to Achish, in search of his servants; and he sent and got them from Gath.

And news was given to Solomon that Shimei had gone from Jerusalem to Gath and had come back again.

Then the king sent for Shimei, and said to him, Did I not make you take an oath by the Lord, protesting to you and saying, Be certain that on the day when you go out from here, wherever you go, death will overtake you? and you said to me, Very well!

And she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while your servant was sleeping; and she took it in her arms and put her dead child in my arms.

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

And Solomon was ruler over all the kingdoms from the River to the land of the Philistines, and as far as the edge of Egypt; men gave him offerings and were his servants all the days of his life.

Ten fat oxen and twenty oxen from the fields, and a hundred sheep, in addition to harts and gazelles and roes and fat fowls.

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.

So Judah and Israel were living safely, every man under his vine and his fig-tree, from Dan as far as Beer-sheba, all the days of Solomon.

He made sayings about all plants, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop hanging on the wall; and about all beasts and birds and fishes and the small things of the earth.

People came from every nation to give ear to the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had word of his wisdom.

So now, will you have cedar-trees from Lebanon cut down for me, and my servants will be with your servants; and I will give you payment for your servants at whatever rate you say; for it is common knowledge that we have no such wood-cutters among us as the men of Zidon.

My men will take them down from Lebanon to the sea, where I will have them corded together to go by sea to whatever place you say, and I will have them cut up there so that you may take them away; as for payment, it will be enough if you give me food for my people.

The door to the lowest side rooms was in the right side of the house; and they went up by twisting steps into the middle rooms, and from the middle into the third.

And I will be ever among the children of Israel, and will not go away from my people.

The walls of the house were covered inside with cedar-wood boards; from the floor to the roof of the house they were covered inside with wood; and the floor was covered with boards of cypress-wood.

With outstretched wings five cubits wide; the distance from the edge of one wing to the edge of the other was ten cubits.

The two winged ones were ten cubits high, of the same size and form.

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.

All these buildings were made, inside and out, from base to crowning stone, and outside to the great walled square, of highly priced stone, cut to different sizes with cutting-instruments.

Then King Solomon sent and got Hiram from Tyre.

And he made a great metal water-vessel ten cubits across from edge to edge, five cubits high and thirty cubits round.

And under the edge of it, circling it all round for ten cubits, were two lines of flower buds, made together with it from liquid metal.

And on the square sides between the frames were lions, oxen, and winged ones; and the same on the frame; and over and under the lions and the oxen and the winged ones were steps.

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.

From the day when I took my people Israel out 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; but I made selection of David to be king over my people Israel.

Then let your ear be open in heaven, and be the judge of your servants, giving your decision against the wrongdoer, so that punishment for his sins may come on his head; and, by your decision, keeping from evil him who has done no wrong.

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:

And as for the man from a strange land, who is not of your people Israel; when he comes from a far country because of the glory of your name:

For you made them separate from all the peoples of the earth, to be your heritage, as you said by Moses your servant, when you took our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.

Then Solomon, after making all these prayers and requests for grace to the Lord, got up from his knees before the altar of the Lord, where his hands had been stretched out in prayer to heaven;

Now may the Lord our God be with us as he was with our fathers; let him never go away from us or give us up;

So Solomon and all Israel with him, a very great meeting, (for the people had come together from the way into Hamath to the river of Egypt,) kept the feast at that time before the Lord our God, for two weeks, even fourteen days.

But if you are turned from my ways, you or your children, and do not keep my orders and my laws which I have put before you, but go and make yourselves servants to other gods and give them worship:

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 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.

But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns which Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them.

At that time Solomon made Pharaoh's daughter come up from the town of David to the house which he had made for her: then he made the Millo.

And the sea-force of Hiram, in addition to gold from Ophir, came back with much sandal-wood and jewels.

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 King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatever she made request for, in addition to what he gave her freely from the impulse of his heart. So she went back to her country, she and her servants.

In addition to what came to him from the business of the traders, and from all the kings of the Arabians, and from the rulers of the country.

And from all over the earth they came to see Solomon and to give ear to his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.

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

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.

The nations of which the Lord had said to the children of Israel, You are not to take wives from them and they are not to take wives from you; or they will certainly make you go after their gods: to these Solomon was united in love.

And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had twice come to him in a vision;

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.

I will not do it in your life-time, because of your father David, but I will take it from your son.

Still I will not take all the kingdom from him; but I will give one tribe to your son, because of my servant David, and because of Jerusalem, the town of my selection.

And they went on from Midian and came to Paran; and, taking men from Paran with them, they came to Egypt, to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who gave him a house and gave orders for his food and gave him land.

And God sent another trouble-maker, Rezon, the son of Eliada, who had gone in flight from his lord, Hadadezer, king of Zobah:

And there was Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite from Zeredah, a servant of Solomon, whose mother was Zeruah, a widow; and his hand was lifted up against the king.

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;

Because they are turned away from me to the worship of Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and Chemosh, the god of Moab, and Milcom, the god of the Ammonites; they have not been walking in my ways or doing what is right in my eyes or keeping my laws and my decisions as his father David did.

But I will not take the kingdom from him; I will let him be king all the days of his life, because of David my servant, in whom I took delight because he kept my orders and my laws.

But I will take the kingdom from his son, and give it to you.

And, hearing of it, Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who was still in Egypt, where he had gone in flight from Solomon, and was living there, came back to his town Zeredah, in the hill-country of Ephraim;

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

Then Jeroboam made the town of Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim a strong place, and was living there; and from there he went out and did the same to Penuel.

And he made places for worship at the high places, and made priests, who were not Levites, from among all the people.

Then a man of God came from Judah by the order of the Lord to Beth-el, where Jeroboam was by the altar, burning offerings.

And by the order of the Lord he made an outcry against the altar, saying, O altar, altar, the Lord has said, From the seed of David will come a child, named Josiah, and on you he will put to death the priests of the high places, who are burning offerings on you, and men's bones will be burned on you.

Then the king, hearing the man of God crying out against the altar at Beth-el, put out his hand from the altar, saying, Take him prisoner. And his hand, stretched out against him, became dead, and he had no power of pulling it back.

Then their father said to them, Which way did he go? Now his sons had seen which way the man of God who came from Judah had gone.

And went after the man of God, and came up with him while he was seated under an oak-tree. And he said to him, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said, I am.

And crying out to the man of God who came from Judah, he said, The Lord says, Because you have gone against the voice of the Lord, and have not done as you were ordered by the Lord,

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 the Lord had said to Ahijah, The wife of Jeroboam is coming to get news from you about her son, who is ill; give her such and such an answer; for she will make herself seem to be another woman.

Go, say to Jeroboam, These are the words of the Lord, the God of Israel: Though I took you from among the people, lifting you up to be a ruler over my people Israel,

And took the kingdom away by force from the seed of David and gave it to you, you have not been like my servant David, who kept my orders, and was true to me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes.

So I will send evil on the line of Jeroboam, cutting off from his family every male child, those who are shut up and those who go free in Israel; the family of Jeroboam will be brushed away like a man brushing away waste till it is all gone.

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 took away all the stored wealth from the house of the Lord, and from the king's house, and all the gold body-covers which Solomon had made.

Then Omri went up from Gibbethon, with all the army of Israel, and they made an attack on Tirzah, shutting in the town on every side.

He got the hill Samaria from Shemer for the price of two talents of silver, and he made a town there, building it on the hill and naming it Samaria, after Shemer the owner of the hill.

Go from here in the direction of the east, and keep yourself in a secret place by the stream Cherith, east of Jordan.

And Elijah took the child down from his room into the house and gave him to his mother and said to her, See, your son is living.

And Ahab said to Obadiah, Come, let us go through all the country, to all the fountains of water and all the rivers, and see if there is any grass to be had for the horses and the transport beasts, so that we may be able to keep some of the beasts from destruction.

And straight away, when I have gone from you, the spirit of the Lord will take you away, I have no idea where, so that when I come and give word to Ahab, and he sees you not, he will put me to death: though I, your servant, have been a worshipper of the Lord from my earliest years.

Then he said in answer, I have not been troubling Israel, but you and your family; because, turning away from the orders of the Lord, you have gone after the Baals.

So they took the ox which was given them, and made it ready, crying out to Baal from morning till the middle of the day, and saying, O Baal, give ear to us. But there was no voice and no answer. And they were jumping up and down before the altar they had made.

And from the middle of the day they went on with their prayers till the time of the offering; but there was no voice, or any answer, or any who gave attention to them.

And he got up, fearing for his life, and went in flight, and came to Beer-sheba in Judah, parting there from his servant;

And it will come about that the man who gets away safe from the sword of Hazael, Jehu will put to death; and whoever gets away safe from the sword of Jehu, Elisha will put to death.

So he went away from there and came across Elisha, the son of Shaphat, ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen, he himself walking with the twelfth; and Elijah went up to him and put his robe on him.

And the servants of the chiefs who were over the divisions of the land went forward first; and when Ben-hadad sent out, they gave him the news, saying, Men have come out from Samaria.

Then the prophet came up to the king of Israel, and said to him, Now make yourself strong, and take care what you do, or a year from now the king of Aram will come up against you again.

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

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.