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1 Kings 9
1When Solomon had finished the building of the LORD’s house, the ’s house, and all Solomon’s which he was pleased to do,
2The LORD appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.
3The LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before me. I have made this house holy, which you have built, to put my name there forever; and my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually.
4As for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep my statutes and my ordinances,
5then I will establish the of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised to David your father, saying, ‘There shall not fail from you a man on the throne of Israel.’
6But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,
7then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have for my name, out of my sight; and Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
8Though this house is so high, yet everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss; and they will say, ‘Why has the LORD done this to this land and to this house?’
9and they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, and worshiped them, and served them. Therefore the LORD has brought all this evil on them.’”
10At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, the LORD’s house and the ’s house
11(now Hiram the of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar trees and cypress trees, and with gold, according to all his ), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.
12Hiram came out of Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they didn’t please him.
13He said, “What cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” He called them the land of Cabul to this day.
14Hiram sent to the one hundred twenty talents of gold.
15This is the reason of the forced labor which Solomon conscripted: to build the LORD’s house, his own house, Millo, Jerusalem’s wall, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.
16Pharaoh of Egypt had gone up, taken Gezer, burned it with fire, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and given it for a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.
17Solomon built in the land Gezer, Beth Horon the lower,
18Baalath, Tamar in ,
19all the storage cities that Solomon had, the cities for his chariots, the cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon to build for his pleasure in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.
20As for all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the children of Israel—
21their children who were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel were not able utterly to destroy—of them Solomon raised a levy of bondservants to this day.
22But of the children of Israel Solomon made no bondservants; but they were the men of war, his servants, his princes, his captains, and rulers of his chariots and of his horsemen.
23These were the five hundred fifty chief officers who were over Solomon’s work, who ruled over the people who labored in the work.
24But Pharaoh’s daughter came up out of David’s city to her house which Solomon had built for her. Then he built Millo.
25Solomon offered burnt and peace offerings on the altar which he built to the LORD three times per year, burning incense with them on the altar that was before the LORD. So he finished the house.
26 Solomon made a fleet of ships in Ezion Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.
27Hiram sent in the fleet his servants, sailors who had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon.
28They came to Ophir, and fetched from there gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to Solomon.
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Questions this passage answers
Does God provide for my needs?
Scripture says yes, and it is careful about the word need. God promises to supply what his people need, often daily rather than in advance, and he does not promise surplus, comfort or the removal of hard seasons. Paul, who wrote that God will supply every need, also wrote that he had learned to be hungry.
What does the Bible say about fear?
Scripture never tells a frightened person that fear is imaginary. It says do not be afraid hundreds of times, and almost always attaches a reason rather than a technique: I am with you, I have redeemed you, you are of more value than sparrows. It also distinguishes the fear that must go from the fear of the Lord, which is commanded and which shrinks every smaller fear.
What does the Bible say about anxiety?
Scripture treats anxiety with far more tenderness than most Christians expect. It names it honestly, traces it to a divided and overloaded heart, and answers it with the character of God rather than with willpower. The command not to be anxious always comes attached to a reason and to an action, never as a bare demand to feel differently.
What does the Bible say about loneliness?
Scripture treats loneliness as a real ache rather than a spiritual failure. It says the first thing God called not good was a man being alone, that many of his most faithful servants were profoundly lonely, that his own presence is promised and sufficient, and that he ordinarily answers isolation by placing people in families and congregations rather than by removing the need.