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.

And Solomon had four thousand boxed-off spaces for horses for his carriages, and twelve thousand horsemen.

And those overseers, every man in his month, saw that food was produced for Solomon and all his guests, they took care that nothing was overlooked.

And they took grain and dry grass for the horses and the carriage-horses, to the right place, every man as he was ordered.

For he was wiser than all men, even than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman and Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and he had a great name among all the nations round about.

Now Hiram, king of Tyre, hearing that Solomon had been made king in place of his father, sent his servants to him; for Hiram had ever been a friend to David.

You have knowledge that David my father was not able to make a house for the name of the Lord his God, because of the wars which were round him on every side, till the Lord put all those who were against him under his feet.

And so it is my purpose to make a house for the name of the Lord my God, as he said to David my father, Your son, whom I will make king in your place, will be the builder of a house for my name.

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.

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.

Then King Solomon got together men for the forced work through all Israel, thirty thousand men in number;

And sent them to Lebanon in bands of ten thousand every month: for a month they were working in Lebanon and for two months in their country, and Adoniram was in control of them.

Then he had seventy thousand for the work of transport, and eighty thousand stone-cutters in the mountains;

Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did the work of cutting them, and put edges on them, and got the wood and the stone ready for the building of the house.

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year that Solomon was king of Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, the building of the Lord's house was started.

The house which Solomon made for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.

And for the house he made windows, with network across.

The lowest line of them being five cubits wide, the middle six cubits wide and the third seven cubits; for there was a space all round the outside walls of the house so that the boards supporting the rooms did not have to be fixed in the walls of the house.

And at the back of the house a further space of twenty cubits was shut in with boards of cedar-wood, for the inmost room.

For the way into the inmost room he made doors of olive-wood, the arch and the door supports forming a five-sided opening.

Then he made pillars of olive-wood for the way into the Temple; the pillars were square:

Solomon was thirteen years building a house for himself till it was complete.

And he made the house of the Woods of Lebanon, which was a hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high, resting on four lines of cedar-wood pillars with cedar-wood supports on the pillars.

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 house for his living-place, the other open square in the covered room, was made in the same way. And then he made a house like it for Pharaoh's daughter, whom Solomon had taken as his wife.

He was the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass; he was full of wisdom and knowledge and an expert worker in brass. He came to King Solomon and did all his work for him.

And he made the two crowns to be put on the tops of the pillars, of brass made soft in the fire; the crowns were five cubits high.

There were nets of open-work for the crowns on the tops of the pillars, a net of open-work for one and a net of open-work for the other.

The crowns on the tops of the pillars were ornamented with a design of flowers, and were four cubits across.

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 he made ten wheeled bases of brass; every one four cubits long, four cubits wide, and three cubits high.

Every base had four wheels of brass, turning on brass rods, and their four angles had angle-plates under them; the angle-plates under the base were of metal, and there were ornaments at the side of every one.

The four wheels were under the frames, and the rods on which the wheels were fixed were in the base; the wheels were a cubit and a half high.

And there were four angle-plates at the four angles of every base, forming part of the structure of the base.

And he made ten brass washing-vessels, everyone taking forty baths, and measuring four cubits; one vessel was placed on every one of the ten bases.

And Hiram made the pots and spades and the basins. So Hiram came to the end of all the work he did for King Solomon in the house of the Lord:

And the four hundred apples for the network, two lines of apples for every network, covering the two cups of the crowns on the pillars;

And the pots and the spades and the basins; all the vessels which Hiram made for King Solomon, for the house of the Lord, were of polished brass.

And Solomon had all the vessels made for use in the house of the Lord: the altar of gold and the gold table on which the holy bread was placed;

And the supports for the lights, five on the right side and five on the left before the inmost room, of clear gold; and the flowers and the lights and all the instruments of gold;

And the cups and the scissors and the basins and the spoons and the fire-trays, all of gold; and the pins on which the doors were turned, the doors of the inner house, the most holy place, and the doors of the Temple, all of gold.

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

For their wings were outstretched over the place where the ark was, covering the ark and its rods.

So that the priests were not able to keep their places to do their work because of the cloud, for the house of the Lord was full of the glory of the Lord.

Then Solomon said, O Lord, to the sun you have given the heaven for a living-place, but your living-place was not seen by men;

So I have made for you a living-place, a house in which you may be for ever present.

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.

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

But the Lord said to David my father, You did well to have in your heart the desire to make a house for my name;

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

And the Lord has made his word come true; for I have taken my father David's place on the seat of the kingdom of Israel, as the Lord gave his word; and I have made a house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

In it I have made a place for the ark, in which is the agreement which the Lord made with our fathers, when he took them out of the land of Egypt.

Said, O Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven or on the earth; keeping faith and mercy unchanging for your servants, while they go in your ways with all their hearts.

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;

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.

Then give ear in heaven, so that the sin of your servants, and of your people Israel, may have forgiveness, when you make clear to them the good way in which they are to go; and send rain on your land which you have given to your people for their heritage.

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:

Give ear in heaven your living-place, acting in mercy; and give to every man whose secret heart is open to you, the reward of all his ways; for you, and you only, have knowledge of the hearts of all the children of men:

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 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:

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:

Give ear in heaven to their prayer and their cry for grace, and see right done to them.

If they do wrong against you, (for no man is without sin,) and you are angry with them and give them up into the power of those who are fighting against them, so that they take them away as prisoners into a strange land, far off or near;

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:

Answering with forgiveness the people who have done wrong against you, and overlooking the evil which they have done against you; let those who made them prisoners be moved with pity for them, and have pity on them;

For they are your people and your heritage, which you took out of Egypt, out of the iron fireplace;

Let your eyes be open to your servant's prayer for grace and to the prayer of your people Israel, hearing them when their cry comes to you.

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;

And Solomon gave to the Lord for peace-offerings, twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel kept the feast of the opening of the Lord's house.

The same day the king made holy the middle of the open square in front of the house of the Lord, offering there the burned offering and the meal offering and the fat of the peace-offerings; for there was not room on the brass altar of the Lord for the burned offerings and the meal offerings and the fat of the peace-offerings.

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.

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.

As for you, if you will go on your way before me, as David your father did, uprightly and with a true heart, doing what I have given you orders to do, keeping my laws and my decisions;

Then I will make the seat of your rule over Israel certain for ever, as I gave my word to David your father, saying, You will never be without a man to be king in Israel.

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.

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. ...

Pharaoh, king of Egypt, came and took Gezer, burning it down and putting to death the Canaanites living in the town, and he gave it for a bride-offering to his daughter, Solomon's wife. ...

And all the store-towns and the towns which Solomon had for his war-carriages and for his horsemen, and everything which it was his pleasure to put up in Jerusalem and in Lebanon and in all the land under his rule.

As for the rest of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not children of Israel;

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.

Three times in the year it was Solomon's way to give burned offerings and peace-offerings on the altar he had made to the Lord, causing his fire-offering to go up on the altar before the Lord.

And they came to Ophir, where they got four hundred and twenty talents of gold, and took it back to King Solomon.

But I had no faith in what was said about you, till I came and saw for myself; and now I see that it was not half the story; your wisdom and your wealth are much greater than they said.

May the Lord your God be praised, whose pleasure it was to put you on the seat of the kingdom of Israel; because the Lord's love for Israel is eternal, he has made you king, to be their judge in righteousness.

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.

And all King Solomon's drinking-vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the Woods of Lebanon were of the best gold; not one was of silver, for no one gave a thought to silver in the days of King Solomon.

For the king had Tarshish-ships at sea with the ships of Hiram; once every three years the Tarshish-ships came with gold and silver and ivory and monkeys and peacocks.

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

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.

For it came about that when Solomon was old, his heart was turned away to other gods by his wives; and his heart was no longer true to the Lord his God as the heart of his father David had been.

For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and Milcom, the disgusting god of the Ammonites.

Then Solomon put up a high place for Chemosh, the disgusting god of Moab, in the mountain before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the disgusting god worshipped by the children of Ammon.

And so he did for all his strange wives, who made offerings with burning of perfumes to their gods.

So the Lord sent Hadad the Edomite to make trouble for Solomon: he was of the king's seed in Edom.

(For Joab and all Israel were there six months till every male in Edom had been cut off;)

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.