1. The Lord's temple and Solomon's palace were now finished, and Solomon had built everything he wanted.
2. Some time later the Lord appeared to him again in a dream, just as he had done at Gibeon.
3. The Lord said:I heard your prayer and what you asked me to do. This temple you have built is where I will be worshipped for ever. It belongs to me, and I will never stop watching over it.
4. You must obey me, as your father David did, and be honest and fair. Obey my laws and teachings,
5. and I will keep my promise to David that someone from your family will always be king of Israel.
6. But if you or any of your descendants disobey my commands or start worshipping foreign gods,
7. I will no longer let my people Israel live in this land I gave them. I will desert this temple where I said I would be worshipped. Then people everywhere will think this nation is only a joke and will make fun of it.
8. This temple will become a pile of rocks! Everyone who walks by will be shocked, and they will ask, “Why did the Lord do such a terrible thing to his people and to this temple?”
9. Then they will answer, “We know why the Lord did this. The people of Israel rejected the Lord their God, who rescued their ancestors from Egypt, and they started worshipping other gods.”
10. It took twenty years for the Lord's temple and Solomon's palace to be built.
11. Later, Solomon gave King Hiram of Tyre twenty towns in the region of Galilee to repay him for the cedar, pine, and gold he had given Solomon.
12. When Hiram went to see the towns, he did not like them.
13. He said, “Solomon, my friend, are these the kind of towns you want to give me?” So Hiram called the region Cabul because he thought it was worthless.
14. He sent Solomon only five thousand kilogrammes of gold in return.