David Prepares for Temple Building

² David commanded to gather together the ^(A)resident aliens who were in the land of Israel, and he ^(B)set stonecutters to prepare dressed stones for building the house of God.

¹⁷ Then Solomon counted all the resident aliens who were in the land of Israel, ^(A)after the census of them that David his father had taken, and there were found 153,600.

²⁰ All the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the people of Israel— ^21 (A)their descendants who were left after them in the land, ^(B)whom the people of Israel were unable to devote to destruction^[a]—^(C)these Solomon drafted to be ^(D)slaves, and so they are to this day.

¹⁷ At the king's command ^(A)they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. ¹⁸ So Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and ^(B)the men of Gebal did the cutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house.

¹⁹ So then you are no longer ^(A)strangers and aliens,^[a] but you are ^(B)fellow citizens with the saints and ^(C)members of the household of God, ^20 (D)built on the foundation of the ^(E)apostles and prophets, ^(F)Christ Jesus himself being ^(G)the cornerstone, ^21 (H)in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into ^(I)a holy temple in the Lord. ²² In him ^(J)you also are being built together ^(K)into a dwelling place for God by^[b] the Spirit.

¹² remember ^(A)that you were at that time separated from Christ, ^(B)alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to ^(C)the covenants of promise, ^(D)having no hope and without God in the world.

⁷ So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, ^(A)and food, drink, and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians ^(B)to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, ^(C)according to the grant that they had from Cyrus king of Persia.

^7 (A)All the people who were left of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of Israel, ⁸ from their descendants who were left after them in the land, whom the people of Israel had not destroyed—these Solomon drafted ^(B)as forced labor, and so they are to this day.