Holman Christian Standard Bible

1 Kings 9:6-25 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

6. If you or your sons turn away from following Me and do not keep My commands — My statutes that I have set before you — and if you go and serve other gods and worship them,

7. I will cut off Israel from the land I gave them, and I will reject the temple I have sanctified for My name. Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all the peoples.

8. Though this temple is now exalted, everyone who passes by will be appalled and will mock. They will say: Why did the Lord do this to this land and this temple?

9. Then they will say: Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt. They clung to other gods and worshiped and served them. Because of this, the Lord brought all this ruin on them.

10. At the end of 20 years during which Solomon had built the two houses, the Lord’s temple and the royal palace —

11. Hiram king of Tyre having supplied him with cedar and cypress logs and gold for his every wish — King Solomon gave Hiram 20 towns in the land of Galilee.

12. So Hiram went out from Tyre to look over the towns that Solomon had given him, but he was not pleased with them.

13. So he said, “What are these towns you’ve given me, my brother? ” So he called them the Land of Cabul, as they are still called today.

14. Now Hiram had sent the king 9,000 pounds of gold.

15. This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon had imposed to build the Lord’s temple, his own palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

16. Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He then burned it down, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and gave it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.

17. Then Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Lower Beth-horon,

18. Baalath, Tamar in the Wilderness of Judah,

19. all the storage cities that belonged to Solomon, the chariot cities, the cavalry cities, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, Lebanon, or anywhere else in the land of his dominion.

20. As for all the peoples who remained of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites —

21. their descendants who remained in the land after them, those whom the Israelites were unable to completely destroy — Solomon imposed forced labor on them; it is this way until today.

22. But Solomon did not consign the Israelites to slavery; they were soldiers, his servants, his commanders, his captains, and commanders of his chariots and his cavalry.

23. These were the deputies who were over Solomon’s work: 550 who ruled over the people doing the work.

24. Pharaoh’s daughter moved from the city of David to the house that Solomon had built for her; he then built the terraces.

25. Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar he had built for the Lord, and he burned incense with them in the Lord’s presence. So he completed the temple.