1 Kings 2-3

International Standard Version

David Instructs Solomon

2 As David’s time to die approached, he addressed his son Solomon with these words:

David Dies and Solomon Consolidates His Reign^(A)

¹⁰ After this, David died, as had^[f] his ancestors, and he was buried in the City of David. ¹¹ David had reigned over Israel for 40 years. He reigned in Hebron for seven years and in Jerusalem for 33 years. ¹² Solomon then assumed his father David’s throne, and his kingdom was firmly established.

Adonijah asks for Abishag

¹³ Later, Haggith’s son Adonijah approached Solomon’s mother. “Are you here on a peaceful mission?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied. ¹⁴ “I have something to ask you about.”

“Talk,” she told him.

¹⁵ So he replied, “You know that the kingdom should have come to me, and that everyone in Israel intended to place me as the next^[g] king. However, the kingdom has turned around and now belongs to my brother, because it went to him from the Lord. ¹⁶ So now I’m asking one thing from you. Don’t refuse me.”

“Talk,” she told him.

¹⁷ Then he asked her, “Please talk to King Solomon for me, since he won’t refuse you. Ask him to give me Abishag the Shunammite as a wife.”

¹⁸ “Very well,” Bathsheba replied. “I’ll talk to the king for you.” ¹⁹ So Bathsheba went to talk to King Solomon for Adonijah. The king rose to meet her, bowed to her, and sat down on his throne. He ordered a throne be set in place for his mother. She sat on a throne to his right ²⁰ and told him,^[h] “I would like to make a minor request of you. Please don’t refuse me.”

“What is your request, mother?” the king asked her. “I won’t turn you down.”

²¹ So she asked him, “Give Abishag the Shunammite to your brother Adonijah as a wife.”

²² But King Solomon replied to his mother, “Why are you asking Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Why not ask me to give up the kingdom for him, since he’s my older brother, and why not ask^[i] for Abiathar the priest, and for Zeruiah’s son Joab?”

²³ Then King Solomon took this oath in the name of the Lord: “May God do so to me, and more besides, if Adonijah hasn’t endangered his life by bringing up this subject. ²⁴ Now therefore, as the Lord lives, who has established me and set me on the throne of my father David, and who has established a dynasty, just like he promised, Adonijah will surely be executed today.” ²⁵ So King Solomon sent for Jehoiada’s son Benaiah, who attacked and killed Adonijah.^[j]

²⁶ The king also told Abiathar the priest, “Go home to Anathoth. You deserve to die, but I won’t kill you today, because you carried the ark of the Lord God before my father David and because you shared all the troubles that my father went through.” ²⁷ So Solomon fired Abiathar as the Lord’s priest, thus fulfilling the promise that the Lord had spoken in Shiloh concerning Eli’s household.^[k]

Joab is Executed

²⁸ When Joab learned what had happened, he ran to the Lord’s tent and grabbed hold of the horns of the altar, since Joab had supported Adonijah (though he had not supported Absalom). ²⁹ Somebody informed King Solomon, “Joab just ran to the Lord’s tent and now he’s standing beside the altar!”

But Solomon ordered Jehoiada’s son Benaiah, “Go kill him!”

³⁰ So Benaiah went into the Lord’s tent and told Joab,^[l] “The king orders you to come out!”

“No,” Joab said, “I’d rather die here!”

So Benaiah went and informed the king, “This is how Joab answered me.”

³¹ The king replied to him, “Do just what he asked. Kill him and bury him so that you may remove from me and from my father’s household the guilt that Joab shed needlessly. ³² The Lord will repay him for his bloodshed because, without my father David’s consent he attacked and murdered two men more righteous and better than he, Ner’s son Abner, the commander of Israel’s army and Jether’s son Amasa, commander of Judah’s army. ³³ May their blood be repaid to Joab and to his descendants forever, and may there be peace shown from the Lord forever to David, to his descendants, to his household, and to his throne.”

³⁴ Jehoiada’s son Benaiah then approached Joab, attacked him, killed him, and had him buried at Joab’s^[m] home in the wilderness. ³⁵ The king appointed Jehoiada’s son Benaiah in charge of the army to replace Joab and also appointed Zadok the priest to replace Abiathar.

Shimei is Executed

³⁶ The king sent for Shimei and told him, “Build yourself a house in Jerusalem and live there, but don’t go anywhere from there. ³⁷ If you ever leave and cross the Kidron Brook, you can be sure that you’ll die. You’ll be responsible for your own death.”

³⁸ Shimei replied to the king, “What your majesty has decreed is acceptable to me. I’ll do what you’ve said.” So Shimei lived in Jerusalem for quite some time. ³⁹ But three years later, two of Shimei’s servants escaped to Maacah’s son Achish, the king of Gath.

Somebody told Shimei, “Look! Your servants went to Gath!” ⁴⁰ So Shimei got up, saddled a donkey, and traveled to Gath to find his servants. He found them and brought them back from Gath.

⁴¹ Later, Solomon found out that Shimei had left Jerusalem, gone to Gath, and had returned, ⁴² so the king sent for Shimei and asked him, “Didn’t I make a promise to the Lord and warn you, ‘The day you leave and go anywhere else, you can be sure you’ll die’? And you told me, ‘What your majesty has decreed is acceptable to me.’ ⁴³ So why haven’t you kept the oath you made to the Lord, and why didn’t you obey my personal order to you?”

⁴⁴ The king also reminded Shimei, “You know all the evil things that you admit you did to my father David. Therefore the Lord is going to repay you for^[n] all of your evil. ⁴⁵ But King Solomon will be blessed, and David’s throne will be established in the presence of the Lord forever.” ⁴⁶ So the king gave orders to Jehoiada’s son Benaiah to go out, attack Shimei, and kill him. That is how the kingdom was established under Solomon’s control.

Solomon Prays for Wisdom^(B)

3 Later, Solomon intermarried with the family of^[o] Pharaoh, the king of Egypt by taking his daughter and bringing her to the City of David to live until he had completed building his own palace, the Lord’s Temple, and the wall around Jerusalem. ² The people were sacrificing at various high places because the Temple had not yet been built and dedicated to^[p] the Lord.

³ Solomon loved the Lord, and lived according to the statutes that his father David obeyed, except that he sacrificed and burned offerings at the high places. ⁴ The king used to go to Gibeon to sacrifice, since there was a famous high place there, where Solomon once offered 1,000 burnt offerings on that altar. ⁵ The Lord appeared to Solomon one night in a dream and told him, “Ask me for whatever you want and I’ll give it to you.”

⁶ So Solomon said:

¹⁰ The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this, ¹¹ so God told him:

¹⁵ Then Solomon woke up and realized that he had dreamed a dream. Then he went back to Jerusalem, stood before the ark of the Lord’s covenant, offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and threw a party for all of his servants.

Solomon’s Wisdom is Tested

¹⁶ Right about then, two prostitutes approached the king and requested an audience with him. ¹⁷ One woman said, “Your majesty, this woman and I live in the same house. I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. ¹⁸ Three days later, this woman also gave birth. We lived alone there. There was nobody else with us in the house. It was just the two of us. ¹⁹ This woman’s son died overnight because she laid on top of him. ²⁰ She got up in the middle of the night, took my son from me while your servant was asleep, and laid him to her breast after laying her dead son next to me. ²¹ The next morning, I got up to nurse my son, and he was dead. But when I examined him carefully in the light of day, he turned out not to be my son whom I had borne!”

²² “Not so,” claimed the other woman. “The living child is my son, and the dead one is yours.”

But the first woman said, “Not so! The dead child is your son and the living one is my son.” This is what they testified before the king.

²³ The king said, “One of them claims, ‘This living son is mine, and your son is the dead one’ and the other claims ‘No. Your son is the dead one and my son is the living one.’ ²⁴ “Somebody get me a sword.” So they brought a sword to the king. ²⁵ “Divide the living child in two!” he ordered. “Give half to the one and half to the other.”

²⁶ The woman whose child was still alive cried out to the king, because her heart yearned for her son. “Oh no, your majesty!” she said. “Give her the living child. Please don’t kill him.”

But the other woman said, “Cut him in half! That way, he’ll belong to neither one of us.”

²⁷ The king announced his decision: “Give the living child to the first woman. Don’t kill him. She is his mother.” ²⁸ When this decision that the king had handed down was announced, everybody in Israel was amazed at^[r] the king, because they all saw that God’s wisdom was in him, enabling him to administer justice.