King James Version · The united kingdom
1 Kings 9
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
And it came to pass, when had finished the building of the , and the king’s house, and all ’s which he was pleased to do, That appeared to the second time, as he had appeared unto him at . And said unto him, I have heard thy and thy , that thou hast made before me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put my name there for ever; and mine eyes and mine shall be there perpetually. And if thou wilt walk before me, as thy walked, in integrity of , and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep and my judgments: Then I will establish of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to thy , saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon of Israel. But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my and which I have set before you, but go and other gods, and them: Then will I Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a and among all people: And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath done thus unto this land, and to this house? And they shall answer, Because they forsook their , who brought forth their fathers out of the land of , and have taken hold upon other gods, and have them, and them: therefore hath brought upon them all this evil. And it came to pass at the end of twenty years, when had built the two houses, the , and the king’s house, (Now the king of had furnished with cedar trees and fir trees, and with gold, according to all his ,) that then king gave twenty cities in the land of . And came out from to see the cities which had given him; and they pleased him not. And he said, What cities are these which thou hast given me, my brother? And he called them the land of unto this day. And sent to the king sixscore of gold. And this is the reason of the levy which king ; for to build the , and his own house, and , and the wall of , and , and , and . For king of had gone up, and taken , and burnt it with , and slain that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter, ’s wife. And built , and the nether, And Baalath, and Tadmor in , in the land, And all the cities of store that had, and cities for his chariots, and cities for his horsemen, and that which to build in , and in , and in all the land of his . And all the people that were left of the , , , , and , which were not of the , Their children that were left after them in the land, whom the also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day. But of the did make no bondmen: but they were men of war, and his servants, and his princes, and his captains, and of his chariots, and his horsemen. These were the chief of the officers that were over ’s work, five hundred and fifty, which the people that wrought in the work. But ’s daughter came up out of unto her house which had built for her: then did he build . And three times in a year did offer burnt offerings and upon the which he built unto , and he burnt upon the that was before . So he finished the house. And king made a navy of ships in –geber, which is beside , on the shore of , in the land of . And sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of . And they came to , and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty , and brought it to king .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.