¹When Solomon had finished the building of the LORD ’s house , the king ’s house , and all Solomon ’s desire which he was pleased to do ,

²The LORD appeared to Solomon the second time , as he had appeared to him at Gibeon .

³The LORD said to him , “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before me . I have made this house holy , which you have built , to put my name there forever ; and my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually .

⁴As for you , if you will walk before me as David your father walked , in integrity of heart and in uprightness , to do according to all that I have commanded you , and will keep my statutes and my ordinances ,

⁵then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever , as I promised to David your father, saying , ‘There shall not fail from you a man on the throne of Israel .’

⁶But if you turn away from following me , you or your children , and not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you , but go and serve other gods and worship them ,

⁷then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them ; and I will cast this house , which I have made holy for my name , out of my sight ; and Israel will be a proverb and a byword amongst all peoples .

⁸Though this house is so high , yet everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss ; and they will say, ‘Why has the LORD done this to this land and to this house ?’

⁹and they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God , who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt , and embraced other gods, and worshipped them , and served them . Therefore the LORD has brought all this evil on them .’”

¹⁰At the end of twenty years , in which Solomon had built the two houses , the LORD ’s house and the king ’s house

¹¹(now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar trees and cypress trees , and with gold , according to all his desire ), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee .

¹²Hiram came out of Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him ; and they didn’t please him .

¹³He said , “What cities are these which you have given me , my brother?” He called them the land of Cabul to this day .[#9:13 “Cabul” sounds like Hebrew for “good-for-nothing”.]

¹⁴Hiram sent to the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold .[#9:14 A talent is about 30 kilograms or 66 pounds or 965 Troy ounces, so 120 talents is about 3.6 metric tonnes]

¹⁵This is the reason of the forced labour which King Solomon conscripted : to build the LORD ’s house , his own house , Millo , Jerusalem ’s wall , Hazor , Megiddo , and Gezer .

¹⁶Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up , taken Gezer , burnt it with fire, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city , and given it for a wedding gift to his daughter , Solomon ’s wife.

¹⁷Solomon built in the land Gezer , Beth Horon the lower ,

¹⁸Baalath , Tamar in the wilderness ,

¹⁹all the storage cities that Solomon had , the cities for his chariots , the cities for his horsemen , and that which Solomon desired to build for his pleasure in Jerusalem , and in Lebanon , and in all the land of his dominion .

²⁰As for all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites , the Perizzites , the Hivites , and the Jebusites , who were not of the children of Israel —

²¹their children who were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel were not able utterly to destroy —of them Solomon raised a levy of bondservants to this day .

²²But of the children of Israel Solomon made no bondservants; but they were the men of war , his servants , his princes , his captains , and rulers of his chariots and of his horsemen .

²³These were the five hundred and fifty chief officers who were over Solomon ’s work , who ruled over the people who laboured in the work .

²⁴But Pharaoh ’s daughter came up out of David ’s city to her house which Solomon had built for her . Then he built Millo .

²⁵Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built to the LORD three times per year , burning incense with them on the altar that was before the LORD . So he finished the house .

²⁶King Solomon made a fleet of ships in Ezion Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea , in the land of Edom.

²⁷Hiram sent in the fleet his servants , sailors who had knowledge of the sea , with the servants of Solomon .

²⁸They came to Ophir, and fetched from there gold , four hundred and twenty talents , and brought it to King Solomon .[#9:28 A talent is about 30 kilograms or 66 pounds or 965 Troy ounces, so 420 talents is about 12.6 metric tonnes]