King James Version · The united kingdom
2 Chronicles 8
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 at the end of twenty years, wherein had built the , and his own house, That the cities which Huram had restored to , built them, and caused the to there. And went to –zobah, and prevailed against it. And he built Tadmor in , and all the store cities, which he built in . Also he built the upper, and the nether, fenced cities, with walls, , and bars; And Baalath, and all the store cities that had, and all the chariot cities, and the cities of the horsemen, and all that to build in , and in , and throughout all the land of his . As for all the people that were left of the , and the , and the , and the , and the , which were not of Israel, But of their children, who were left after them in the land, whom the consumed not, them did make to pay tribute until this day. But of the did make no servants for his work; but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and captains of his chariots and horsemen. And these were the chief of king ’s officers, even two hundred and fifty, that the people. And brought up the daughter of out of unto the house that he had built for her: for he said, My wife shall not in the house of king of Israel, because the places are , whereunto the hath come. Then offered burnt offerings unto on the of , which he had built before the porch, Even after a certain rate every day, according to the of , on the , and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts, three times in the year, even in the feast of , and in the , and in the . And he appointed, according to the order of his , the courses of the priests to their , and the to their charges, to and minister before the priests, as the duty of every day required: the porters also by their courses at every : for so had the commanded. And they departed not from the of the king unto the priests and concerning any matter, or concerning the . Now all the work of was prepared unto the day of the foundation of the , and until it was finished. So the was perfected. Then went to –geber, and to , at the sea side in the land of . And Huram sent him by the hands of his servants ships, and servants that had knowledge of the sea; and they went with the servants of to , and took thence four hundred and fifty of gold, and brought them 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.