Study Desk

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 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.

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:

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

Their children who were still in the land, and whom the children of Israel had not been able to put to complete destruction, them did Solomon put to forced work, to this day.

But Solomon did not put the children of Israel to forced work; they were the men of war, his servants, his captains, and his chiefs, captains of his war-carriages and of his horsemen.

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.

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.

(But Rehoboam was still king over those of the children of Israel who were living in the towns of Judah.)

The Lord has said, You are not to go to war against your brothers, the children of Israel; go back, every man to his house, because this thing is my purpose. So they gave ear to the word of the Lord, and went back, as the Lord had said.

And more than this, there were those in the land who were used for sex purposes in the worship of the gods, doing the same disgusting crimes as the nations which the Lord had sent out before the children of Israel.

So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and got the prophets together at Mount Carmel.

And he said, I have been burning for the honour of the Lord, the God of armies; for the children of Israel have not kept your agreement; they have made destruction of your altars, and have put your prophets to death with the sword: till I, even I, am the only one living; and now they are attempting to take away my life.

And he said, I have been burning for the honour of the Lord, the God of armies; for the children of Israel have not kept your agreement; they have had your altars broken down, and have put your prophets to death with the sword: till I, even I, am the only one living; and now they are attempting to take away my life.

And they said to him, Ben-hadad says, Your silver and your gold are mine; and your wives and children are mine.

Then the representatives came back again, and said, These are the words of Ben-hadad: I sent to you saying, Give up to me your silver and your gold, your wives and your children;

Then the king of Israel sent for all the responsible men of the land, and said, Now will you take note and see the evil purpose of this man: he sent for my wives and my children, my silver and my gold, and I did not keep them back.

Then he got together the servants of all the chiefs who were over the divisions of the land, two hundred and thirty-two of them; and after them, he got together all the people, all the children of Israel, seven thousand.

And the children of Israel got themselves together, and food was made ready and they went against them; the tents of the children of Israel were like two little flocks of goats before them, but all the country was full of the Aramaeans.

Now the two armies kept their positions facing one another for seven days. And on the seventh day the fight was started; and the children of Israel put to the sword a hundred thousand Aramaean footmen in one day.