The Daily Audio Bible

God Blesses Solomon With Wisdom and Possessions

1 Solomon, the son of David, firmly established his rule over his kingdom. The Lord his God was with him and made him very great. ² Solomon spoke to all Israel, to the commanders of the units of a thousand and a hundred, to the judges, to all the leaders of all Israel, that is, to all the leading fathers.^[a]

³ Solomon and the whole assembly with him went to the high place at Gibeon, because God’s Tent of Meeting, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, had made in the wilderness, was located there.

⁴ (David had brought up the Ark of God from Kiriath Jearim to the place he had prepared for it, because he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem. ⁵ But the bronze altar, which Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, was set up in front of the Tent of the Lord, so that was where Solomon and the assembly sought God.)

⁶ Solomon went to the bronze altar there in the presence of the Lord at the Tent of Meeting, and he offered a thousand burnt offerings upon the altar.

⁷ That night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give to you.”

⁸ Solomon said to God, “You have shown great mercy and faithfulness^[b] to my father David, and you have made me king in his place. ⁹ Now, Lord God, let your commitment to David my father be fully realized, because you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth. ¹⁰ Now give me wisdom and knowledge, so that I can come and go^[c] before this people, for who is up to the task of judging^[d] this great people of yours?”

¹¹ God said to Solomon, “Because this was on your heart, and you did not ask for riches, possessions, and honor, or for the lives of those who hate you, or even for many days of life, and because you have asked for wisdom and knowledge for yourself so that you can judge my people, over whom I have made you king, ¹² wisdom and knowledge will be given to you. I will also give you riches, possessions, and honor, the likes of which the kings before you never had, nor will those who come after you.”

Military and Economic Prosperity

¹³ After Solomon had gone up to the high place in Gibeon, he returned from the Tent of Meeting to Jerusalem, and he ruled as king over Israel.

¹⁴ Solomon accumulated chariots and charioteers. He had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand charioteers, and he stationed them in the chariot cities, as well as with the king in Jerusalem. ¹⁵ In Jerusalem the king made silver and gold as plentiful as ordinary stones. He made cedar as plentiful as sycamore fig trees in the Shephelah.^{[e] 16} Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and Kue.^[f] The king’s dealers bought them from Kue for the market price. ¹⁷ They could import a chariot from Egypt for six hundred silver shekels and a horse for one hundred fifty. In the same way these dealers exported chariots to all the kings of the Hittites and Aram.

Preparations for Building the Temple

2 Solomon said that he would build a temple for the Name of the Lord and a palace for his kingdom.^{[g] 2} He assigned seventy thousand men to transport materials, eighty thousand to quarry stone in the hills, and thirty-six hundred to supervise them.

Solomon’s Letter

³ Solomon sent this message to Huram^[h] king of Tyre:

Huram’s Reply

¹¹ Huram king of Tyre sent a letter to Solomon which said:

¹² Huram also said:

¹⁷ Solomon took a census of all the male aliens who were residing in the land of Israel, after the census his father David had taken. There were 153,600.

¹⁸ Out of that number he designated 70,000 to transport materials, 80,000 to quarry stone in the hills, and 3600 overseers to make the people work.

The Construction of the Temple

3 Then Solomon began to build the House of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. He constructed it on the site that David had specified,^[m] namely, the threshing floor of Ornan^[n] the Jebusite. ² He began building on the second day of the second month in the fourth year of his reign.

The Sanctuary

³ Now these are the dimensions of the foundations which Solomon laid for the building of God’s house. The length was ninety feet and the width thirty feet.^{[o] 4} The porch^[p] that was in front of the temple building was thirty feet wide, the same as the width of the building, and it was thirty feet high.^[q]

He overlaid the inside with pure gold. ⁵ He lined the larger front room of the building with fir paneling,^[r] which he overlaid with fine gold and decorated with palm trees and chains. ⁶ He beautified the house with dazzling precious stones. The gold was gold of Parvaim.^{[s] 7} He also overlaid the house, the beams and rafters, the thresholds and door frames, its walls, and its doors with gold, and he carved cherubim on the walls.

⁸ He made the Most Holy Place. It was thirty feet by thirty feet, the same dimensions as the width of the building, and he overlaid it with six hundred talents of fine gold.^{[t] 9} The weight of the gold nails was more than a pound.^[u] He overlaid the upper areas with gold.

The Cherubim

¹⁰ In the Most Holy Place he made two carved cherubim that were overlaid with gold. ¹¹ The total wingspan of the cherubim was thirty feet. One wing of the first cherub was seven and a half feet long and touched the outer wall of the house. The other wing was also seven and a half feet long and touched the wing of the other cherub. ¹² One wing of the other cherub was seven and a half feet long and touched the outer wall of the house. The other wing was also seven and a half feet long and touched the wing of the first cherub. ¹³ The wings of these cherubim spread out over thirty feet. They stood upright on their feet, and they faced toward the front of the sanctuary building.^{[v] 14} He made the veil of blue, purple, and crimson material and fine white linen, and he decorated it with cherubim.

Pillars

¹⁵ For the front of the house he made two pillars with a combined height of fifty-three feet,^[w] and the capitals that were on top of each of them were seven and a half feet tall. ¹⁶ He made chains for the inner sanctuary^[x] and also put them on the tops of the pillars. He also made one hundred pomegranates and put them on the chains. ¹⁷ He set up the pillars in front of the temple building,^[y] one on the south side and the other on the north. He named the one on the south Jakin^[z] and the one on the north Boaz.^[aa]

Dead to Sin and Living for God

6 What shall we say then? Shall we keep on sinning so that grace may increase? ² Absolutely not! We died to sin. How can we go on living in it any longer? ³ Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him by this baptism into his death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection.

⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him, to make our sinful body powerless, so that we would not continue to serve sin. ⁷ For the person who has died has been declared free from sin. ⁸ And since we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he will never die again. Death no longer has control over him. ¹⁰ For the death he died, he died to sin once and for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ In the same way also consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.^[a]

Serve God, Not Sin, in Your Life

¹² Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. ¹³ Do not offer the members of your body to sin as tools of unrighteousness. Instead, offer yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and offer the members of your body to God as tools of righteousness. ¹⁴ Indeed, sin will not continue to control you, because you are not under law but under grace.

¹⁵ What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness?

¹⁷ Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. ¹⁸ After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ (I am speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your flesh.) Indeed, just as you offered your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer your members in the same way as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. ²¹ So what kind of fruit did you have then? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death. ²² But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Psalm 16

You Will Not Abandon Me to the Grave

Heading

A miktam^[a] by David.

You Are My Lord

You Will Not Abandon Me to the Grave