World English Bible · The united kingdom
1 Kings 9
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When had finished the building of house, the king's house, and all which he was pleased to do, appeared to the second time, as he had appeared to him at . said to him, "I have heard your and your that you have made before me. I have made this house , which you have built, to put my name there ; and my eyes and shall be there perpetually. As for you, if you will walk before me as your walked, in integrity of and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep and my ordinances, then I will establish of your kingdom over Israel , as I promised to your , saying, 'There shall not fail from you a man on of Israel.' But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and not keep my and which I have set before you, but go and other gods and them, then I will Israel out of the land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have made for my name, out of my sight; and Israel will be a and among all peoples. Though this house is so high, yet everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss; and they will say, 'Why has done this to this land and to this house?' and they will answer, 'Because they abandoned their , who brought their fathers out of the land of , and embraced other gods, and them, and them. Therefore has brought all this evil on them.'" At the end of twenty years, in which had built the two houses, house and the king's house (now the king of had furnished with cedar trees and cypress trees, and with gold, according to all his ), King gave twenty cities in the land of . came out of to see the cities which had given him; and they didn't please him. He said, "What cities are these which you have given me, my brother?" He called them the land of to this day. sent to the king one hundred twenty of gold. This is the reason of the forced labor which King conscripted: to build house, his own house, , wall, , , and . king of had gone up, taken , burned it with , killed who lived in the city, and given it for a gift to his daughter, wife. built in the land , the lower, Baalath, in , all the storage cities that had, the cities for his chariots, the cities for his horsemen, and that which to build for his pleasure in , and in , and in all the land of his . As for all the people who were left of the , the , the , the , and the , who were not of the — their children who were left after them in the land, whom the were not able utterly to destroy—of them a levy of to this day. But of the made no ; but they were the men of war, his servants, his princes, his captains, and of his chariots and of his horsemen. These were the five hundred fifty chief officers who were over work, who ruled over the people who labored in the work. But daughter came up out of city to her house which had built for her. Then he built . offered burnt offerings and on the which he built to three times per year, burning with them on the that was before . So he finished the house. King made a fleet of ships in , which is beside , on the shore of , in the land of . sent in the fleet his servants, sailors who had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of . They came to , and fetched from there gold, four hundred and twenty , and brought it to King .
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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.