1 Kings 9

1 Now when Solomon came to the end of building the house of the Lord and the king's house, and all Solomon's desires, which he had in mind were effected;

After Solomon’s [workers] had finished building the temple and his palace and everything else that Solomon wanted them to build,

2 The Lord came to him again in a vision, as he had done at Gibeon;

Yahweh appeared to him [in a dream] a second time, like he had appeared to him at [the city of] Gibeon.

3 And the Lord said to him, Your prayers and your requests for grace have come to my ears: I have made holy this house which you have made, and I have put my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

Yahweh said to him, “I heard what you prayed and what you pleaded for me to do. I have set apart/dedicated this temple which your [workers] have built to be the place where people will worship me forever. I will always watch over it and protect it.

4 As for you, if you will go on your way before me, as David your father did, uprightly and with a true heart, doing what I have given you orders to do, keeping my laws and my decisions;

“And as for you, if you conduct your life as I want you to, like your father David did, and if you very sincerely obey all the statutes and laws that I have commanded you to obey,

5 Then I will make the seat of your rule over Israel certain for ever, as I gave my word to David your father, saying, You will never be without a man to be king in Israel.

I will do what I promised your father that I would do: I promised him that Israel would always be ruled by his descendants.

6 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:

“But if you or your descendants turn away from me and disobey the commands and decrees that I have given to you, and if you start to worship other gods,

7 Then I will have Israel cut off from the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for myself, I will put away from before my eyes; and Israel will be a public example, and a word of shame among all peoples.

I will remove my Israeli people from the land that I have given to them. I will also abandon this temple that I have set apart/dedicated to be the place where people should worship me. Then people everywhere will despise [the people of] Israel and make fun of them.

8 And this house will become a mass of broken walls, and everyone who goes by will be overcome with wonder at it and make whistling sounds; and they will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land and to this house?

This temple will become a heap of ruins. Everyone who passes by will be astonished [when they see it], and they will be shocked and say, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land and to this temple?’

9 And their answer will be, Because they were turned away from the Lord their God, who took their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they took for themselves other gods and gave them worship and became their servants: that is why the Lord has sent all this evil on them.

And other people will reply, ‘It happened because the Israeli people abandoned Yahweh their God, the one who brought their ancestors out of Egypt. They started to accept and worship other gods. And that is why Yahweh has caused them to experience all these disasters.’”

10 Now at the end of twenty years, in which time Solomon had put up the two houses, the house of the Lord and the king's house,

Solomon’s [workers] labored for 20 years to build the temple and the palace.

11 (Hiram, king of Tyre, had given Solomon cedar-trees and cypress-trees and gold, as much as he had need of, ) King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee.

Hiram, the king of Tyre had [arranged for his workers to] give Solomon all the cedar and pine [logs] and all the gold that he needed [for this work]. After it was all finished, King Solomon gave to Hiram 20 cities in the Galilee region.

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

But when Hiram went from Tyre [to Galilee] to see the cities that Solomon had given to him, he was not pleased with them.

13 And he said, What sort of towns are these which you have given me, my brother? So they were named the land of Cabul, to this day.

He said to Solomon, “My friend, those cities that you gave me are worthless!” So, that area is still called ‘Worthless’.

14 And Hiram sent the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold.

Hiram paid Solomon only five tons of gold [for those cities].

15 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. ...

This is a record of the work that King Solomon forced men to do. He forced them to build the temple and his palace and the terraces/landfills [on the east side of the city], and the wall around Jerusalem, and [to rebuild the cities of] Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer.

16 Pharaoh, king of Egypt, came and took Gezer, burning it down and putting to death the Canaanites living in the town, and he gave it for a bride-offering to his daughter, Solomon's wife. ...

[The reason they needed to rebuild Gezer was that the army of] the king of Egypt had attacked Gezer and captured it. Then they had burned [the houses in] the city and killed all the people of the Canaan people-group who lived there. The king of Egypt gave that city to his daughter as a gift when she married Solomon.

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

So Solomon’s workers also rebuilt Gezer, and they also rebuilt Lower Beth-Horon [city].

18 And Baalath and Tamar in the waste land, in that land;

They also rebuilt Baalath and Tamar [towns] in the desert in [the southern part of] Judah.

19 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.

They also built cities where they kept the supplies for Solomon, the places where his horses and chariots were kept. They also built everything else that Solomon wanted them to build, in Jerusalem and in Lebanon, and in other places in the area over which he ruled.

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

There were many people who belonged to the Amor people-group, the Heth people-group, the Periz people-group, the Hiv people-group, and the Jebus people-group who were not killed when the Israelis captured their land.

21 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.

[Their descendants still lived in Israel]. It was those people whom Solomon forced to become his slaves [to build all those places], and they are still slaves.

22 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.

But Solomon did not force any Israeli people to become slaves. Some Israelis became soldiers and army officers and commanders and drivers of his chariots and soldiers who rode on horses.

23 These were the chiefs of the overseers of Solomon's work, five hundred and fifty, in authority over the people who did the work.

There were 550 officials who supervised the slaves who worked [to build all those places].

24 At that time Solomon made Pharaoh's daughter come up from the town of David to the house which he had made for her: then he made the Millo.

After [Solomon’s wife, who was] the daughter of the king of Egypt, moved from [the place outside Jerusalem called] ‘The City of David’ to the palace that Solomon’s workers built for her, Solomon [told his workers to] fill in the slopes on the east side of the city.

25 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.

Three times each year Solomon [brought to the temple] offerings that were completely burned [on the altar] and offerings to restore fellowship with Yahweh. He also brought incense to be burned in the presence of Yahweh. And so his men finished building the temple.

26 And King Solomon made a sea-force of ships in Ezion-geber, by Eloth, on the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.

King Solomon’s [workers] also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-Geber [city], which is near Elath [city], on the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba, in the land belonging to the Edom people-group.

27 Hiram sent his servants, who were experienced seamen, in the sea-force with Solomon's men.

[King] Hiram sent some very expert sailors to work on the ships with Solomon’s workers.

28 And they came to Ophir, where they got four hundred and twenty talents of gold, and took it back to King Solomon.

They sailed to [the] Ophir [region] and brought back to Solomon about 16 tons of gold.