Now King David was old and far on in years; and though they put covers over him, his body was cold.

Now she was very beautiful; and she took care of the king, waiting on him at all times; but the king had no connection with her.

Now all his life his father had never gone against him or said to him, Why have you done so? and he was a very good-looking man, and younger than Absalom.

Then Bath-sheba went into the king's room; now the king was very old, and Abishag the Shunammite was waiting on him.

And while she was still talking with the king, Nathan the prophet came in.

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?

And Zadok the priest took the vessel of oil out of the Tent, and put the holy oil on Solomon. And when the horn was sounded, all the people said, Long life to King Solomon!

And all the people came up after him, piping with pipes, and they were glad with great joy, so that the earth was shaking with the sound.

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.

And the king's servants came to our lord King David, blessing him and saying, May God make the name of Solomon better than your name, and the seat of his authority greater than your seat; and the king was bent low in worship on his bed.

And Adonijah himself was full of fear because of Solomon; and he got up and went to the altar, and put his hands on its horns.

Then David went to rest with his fathers, and his body was put into the earth in the town of David.

David was king over Israel for forty years: for seven years he was king in Hebron and for thirty-three years in Jerusalem.

And Solomon took his place on the seat of David his father, and his kingdom was made safe and strong.

And he said, You saw how the kingdom was mine, and all Israel had the idea that I would be their king; but now the kingdom is turned about, and has become my brother's, for it was given to him by the Lord.

So Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, went up, and falling on him, put him to death; and his body was put to rest in his house in the waste land.

But after three years, two of the servants of Shimei went in flight to Achish, son of Maacah, king of Gath. And word was given to Shimei that his servants had gone to Gath.

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

So the king gave orders to Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada; and he went out and, falling on him, put him to death. And Solomon's authority over the kingdom was complete.

Solomon became the son-in-law of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter as his wife, keeping her in the town of David, till the house he was building for himself, and the house of the Lord and the wall round Jerusalem, were complete.

And the king went to Gibeon to make an offering there, because that was the chief high place: it was Solomon's way to make a thousand burned offerings on that altar.

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.

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 Solomon, awakening, saw that it was a dream; then he came to Jerusalem, where he went before the ark of the agreement of the Lord, offering burned offerings and peace-offerings; and he made a feast for all his servants.

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 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.

And when I got up to give my child the breast, I saw that it was dead; but in the morning, looking at it with care, I saw that it was not my son.

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.

Now Solomon was king over all Israel.

And these were his chief men: Azariah, the son of Zadok, was the priest;

Elihoreph and Ahijah, the sons of Shisha, were scribes; Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilud, was the recorder;

Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, was head of the army; Zadok and Abiathar were priests;

Azariah, the son of Nathan, was over those in authority in the different divisions of the country; Zabud, the son of Nathan, was priest and the king's friend;

Ahishar was controller of the king's house; Adoniram, the son of Abda, was overseer of the forced work.

And Solomon put twelve overseers over all Israel, to be responsible for the stores needed for the king and those of his house; every man was responsible for one month in the year.

... the son of Abinadab in all Naphath-dor; his wife was Taphath, the daughter of Solomon.

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.

And the amount of Solomon's food for one day was thirty measures of crushed grain and sixty measures of meal;

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.

And Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt.

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.

He was the maker of three thousand wise sayings, and of songs to the number of a thousand and five.

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.

Now the Lord had given Solomon wisdom, as he had said to him; and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and they made an agreement together.

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.

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.

The covered way before the Temple of the house was twenty cubits long, as wide as the house, and ten cubits wide in front of the house.

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 the stones used in the building of the house were squared at the place where they were cut out; there was no sound of hammer or axe or any iron instrument while they were building the house.)

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.

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.

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.

And the house, that is, the Temple, in front of the holy place was forty cubits long.

(All the inside of the house was cedar-wood, ornamented with designs of buds and flowers; no stonework was to be seen inside.)

And the inmost room was twenty cubits square and twenty cubits high, plated over with clear gold, and he made an altar of cedar-wood, plating it with gold.

Solomon had all the inside of the house covered with gold, and he put chains of gold across in front of the inmost room, which itself was covered with gold.

Plates of gold were put all through the house till it was covered completely (and the altar in the inmost room was all covered with gold).

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

And the floor of the house was covered with gold, inside and out.

And the inner space was walled with three lines of squared stones and a line of cedar-wood boards.

In the fourth year the base of the house was put in its place, in the month Ziv.

And in the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, the building of the house was complete in every detail, as it had been designed. So he was seven years building it.

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.

And it was covered with cedar over the forty-five supports which were on the pillars, fifteen in a line.

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.

And the base was of great masses of highly priced stone, some ten cubits and some eight cubits square.

The great outer square all round was walled with three lines of squared stones and a line of cedar-wood boards, round about the open square inside the house of the Lord and the covered room of the king's house.

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.

He it was who made the two brass pillars; the first pillar was eighteen cubits high, and a line of twelve cubits went round it; and the second was the same.

The tops of the pillars had a design of flowers; and the work of making the pillars was complete.

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

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

The mouth of it inside the angle-plate was one cubit across; it was round like a pillar, a cubit and a half across; it had designs cut on it; the sides were square, not round.

And at the top of the base there was a round vessel, half a cubit high;

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.

The weight of all these vessels was not measured, because there was such a number of them; it was not possible to get the weight of the 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;

So all the work King Solomon had done in the house of the Lord was complete. Then Solomon took the holy things which David his father had given, the silver and the gold and all the vessels, and put them in the store-houses of the house of the Lord.

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

There was nothing 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 the land of Egypt.

Now when the priests had come out of the holy place, the house of the Lord was full of the cloud,

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;

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.

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;

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.

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

... and Solomon was the builder of Gezer and Beth-horon the lower,

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.

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 Solomon gave her answers to all her questions; there was no secret which the king did not make clear to her.

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 the burned offerings which he made in the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her.

And she said to the king, The account which was given to me in my country of your acts and your wisdom was true.