8. And though this Temple is impressive now, all who pass by will be appalled and will gasp in horror. They will ask, ‘Why did the lord do such terrible things to this land and to this Temple?’
9. “And the answer will be, ‘Because his people abandoned the lord their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead and bowed down to them. That is why the lord has brought all these disasters on them.’”
10. It took Solomon twenty years to build the lord’s Temple and his own royal palace. At the end of that time,
11. he gave twenty towns in the land of Galilee to King Hiram of Tyre. (Hiram had previously provided all the cedar and cypress timber and gold that Solomon had requested.)
12. But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns Solomon had given him, he was not at all pleased with them.
13. “What kind of towns are these, my brother?” he asked. So Hiram called that area Cabul (which means “worthless”), as it is still known today.
14. Nevertheless, Hiram paid Solomon 9,000 pounds of gold.
15. This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon conscripted to build the lord’s Temple, the royal palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.
16. (Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had attacked and captured Gezer, killing the Canaanite population and burning it down. He gave the city to his daughter as a wedding gift when she married Solomon.