Immerse: Kingdoms Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 207
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SAMUEL–KINGS
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the dedication of the altar and seven days for the Festival of Shelters. After
the festival was over, Solomon sent the people home. They blessed the
king and went to their homes joyful and glad because the Lord had been
good to his servant David and to his people Israel.
So Solomon finished building the Temple of the Lord, as well as the royal
palace. He completed everything he had planned to do. Then the Lord
appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had done before at Gibeon. The
Lord said to him,
“I have heard your prayer and your petition. I have set this Temple
apart to be holy—this place you have built where my name will be
honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart.
“As for you, if you will follow me with integrity and godliness,
as David your father did, obeying all my commands, decrees, and
regulations, then I will establish the throne of your dynasty over Israel
forever. For I made this promise to your father, David: ‘One of your
descendants will always sit on the throne of Israel.’
“But if you or your descendants abandon me and disobey the
commands and decrees I have given you, and if you serve and worship
other gods, then I will uproot Israel from this land that I have given
them. I will reject this Temple that I have made holy to honor my
name. I will make Israel an object of mockery and ridicule among the
nations. And though this Temple is impressive now, all who pass by
will be appalled and will gasp in horror. They will ask, ‘Why did the
Lord do such terrible things to this land and to this Temple?’
“And the answer will be, ‘Because his people abandoned the Lord
their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and they
worshiped other gods instead and bowed down to them. That is why
the Lord has brought all these disasters on them.’”
It took Solomon twenty years to build the Lord’s Temple and his own
royal palace. At the end of that time, he gave twenty towns in the land
of Galilee to King Hiram of Tyre. (Hiram had previously provided all
the cedar and cypress timber and gold that Solomon had requested.)
But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns Solomon had given
him, he was not at all pleased with them. “What kind of towns are these,
my brother?” he asked. So Hiram called that area Cabul (which means
“worthless”), as it is still known today. Nevertheless, Hiram paid Solomon
9,000 pounds of gold.