Study Desk

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;

If my people, on whom my name is named, make themselves low and come to me in prayer, searching for me and turning from their evil ways; then I will give ear from heaven, overlooking their sin, and will give life again to their land.

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.

And as for you, if you will go on your way before me as David your father did, doing whatever I have given you orders to do and keeping my laws and my decisions:

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,

He took in hand the building up of the towns which Huram had given him, causing the children of Israel to make living-places for themselves there.

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

But Solomon did not make use of the children of Israel as servants for his work; they were men of war, his chiefs and his captains, and captains of his war-carriages and his horsemen.

Then Solomon made Pharaoh's daughter come up from the town of David to the house which he had made for her; for he said, I will not have my wife living in the house of David, king of Israel, because those places where the ark of the Lord has come are holy.

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.

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 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.

And he made three hundred smaller body-covers of hammered gold, using three hundred shekels of gold for every cover, and the king put them in the house of the Woods of Lebanon.

For the king had Tarshish-ships sailing with the servants of Huram: once every three years the Tarshish-ships came back with gold and silver, ivory and monkeys and peacocks.

And everyone took with him an offering, vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and robes, and coats of metal, and spices, and horses and beasts for transport, regularly year by year.

Solomon had four thousand buildings for his horses and his war-carriages, and twelve thousand horsemen whom he kept, some in the carriage-towns and some with the king in Jerusalem.