1 After Solomon had completed the building of the LORD's house and the king's house and everything Solomon had set his heart on doing,
2 the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, just as he had appeared to him in Gibeon.
3 The LORD told him, "I have heard the prayer and the request you made before me. This house you built I have made holy, setting my name there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be there always.
4 As for you, if you walk before me as your father David walked, in wholeness of heart and in uprightness, doing everything I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and rules,
5 I will make the throne of your kingship over Israel secure forever, as I told your father David: 'There will never fail you a man on Israel's throne.'
6 But if you or your sons should ever turn back from following me and fail to keep my commandments and statutes that I set before you, and go off to serve other gods and bow down to them,
7 I will cut Israel off from the land I gave them, and the house I made holy for my name I will throw away from my presence; Israel will become a byword and an object of mockery among all the peoples.
8 And this house, which is now exalted: everyone who passes by will be appalled and will hiss, saying, 'Why did the LORD do such a thing to this land and to this house?'
9 And people will answer, 'Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out from the land of Egypt, and they took hold of other gods, bowing down to them and serving them. That is why the LORD has brought all this evil upon them.'"
10 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built the two houses, the LORD's house and the king's house,
11 and since Hiram king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar wood, cypress wood and gold, all he wished, King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the region of Galilee.
12 Hiram came out from Tyre to look at the towns Solomon had given him, but they were not right in his eyes.
13 "What are these towns you have given me, my brother?" he said. And they were named the land of Cabul, as they are to this day.
14 Hiram had sent the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold.
15 Here is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the LORD's house, his own house, the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.
16 (Pharaoh king of Egypt had come up, taken Gezer, set it on fire, and killed the Canaanites living in the city; then he gave it as a parting gift to his daughter, Solomon's wife.)
17 Solomon built up Gezer, and Lower Beth-horon,
18 and Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land,
19 and all of Solomon's storage towns, the towns for chariots and the towns for horsemen, and whatever Solomon wished to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and throughout the land he ruled.
20 As for all the people remaining of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, who did not belong to the children of Israel,
21 their descendants still left in the land after them, whom the children of Israel had not been able to devote to destruction, Solomon conscripted them as forced laborers, slaves to this day.
22 From the children of Israel, however, Solomon did not make anyone a slave. They were the soldiers, his servants, his officials, his officers, and commanders of his chariots and horsemen.
23 The chief officers over Solomon's work were five hundred and fifty; they directed the people who did the work.
24 As soon as Pharaoh's daughter had gone up from the city of David to the house Solomon built for her, he built the Millo.
25 Three times each year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he built for the LORD, burning incense along with them before the LORD. And so he completed the house.
26 King Solomon also built ships at Ezion-geber, which lies beside Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.
27 Hiram sent his servants with the ships, sailors who knew the sea, to go along with Solomon's servants.
28 They sailed to Ophir, took from there four hundred and twenty talents of gold, and brought it to King Solomon.