1 When Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD, the royal palace, and everything else he desired to make,

2 the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and the plea you made before me. I have consecrated this house you have built, to put my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there always. 4 As for you, if you walk before me as your father David did, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing all I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and judgments, 5 then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised your father David: ‘You will never lack a man on the throne of Israel.’ 6 But if you and your sons turn away from following me and do not keep the commandments and statutes I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and bow down to them, 7 then I will cut Israel off from the land I have given them, and I will cast out of my presence this house I consecrated for my name. Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 Though this house is lofty, everyone who passes by it will be appalled and hiss. They will ask, ‘Why has the LORD done this to this land and this house?’ 9 They will answer, ‘Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and clung to other gods, bowing down to them and serving them. That is why the LORD has brought all this calamity on them.’ ”

10 At the end of the twenty years in which Solomon built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the royal palace, 11 King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the land of Galilee. Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with all the cedar timber, cypress timber, and gold he desired. 12 Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns Solomon had given him, but they did not please him. 13 He said, “What are these towns you have given me, my brother?” He called them the land of Cabul, as they are called to this day.

14 Hiram had sent the king about 9,000 pounds of gold. 15 This is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the house of the LORD, his own palace, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, captured Gezer, and burned it with fire. He killed the Canaanites living in the city and gave it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife. 17 Solomon rebuilt Gezer and Lower Beth-horon, 18 Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land, 19 as well as all Solomon’s storage cities, the cities for his chariots and horsemen, and everything Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, Lebanon, and all the land he ruled. 20 As for all the people remaining from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites— 21 their descendants who remained in the land after them, whom the Israelites had been unable to destroy completely—Solomon conscripted them for forced labor, as they remain to this day. 22 But Solomon made no Israelites slaves. They were his soldiers, servants, officials, officers, and commanders of his chariots and horsemen.

23 Solomon’s chief officials in charge of the work numbered five hundred fifty. They directed the people doing the work. 24 Pharaoh’s daughter went up from the City of David to the house he had built for her. Then he built the Millo. 25 Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built for the LORD. He also burned incense on the altar before the LORD. So he completed the house. 26 King Solomon built a fleet at Ezion-geber, near Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea in the land of Edom. 27 Hiram sent his servants with the fleet, sailors who knew the sea, alongside Solomon’s servants. 28 They went to Ophir, obtained about 16 tons of gold there, and brought it to King Solomon.