For You have singled them out from all the peoples of the earth as Your inheritance, just as You spoke through Moses Your servant, when You brought our fathers out of Egypt, Lord God.”

May the Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us nor forsake us,

And may these words of mine, with which I have implored the favor of the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, so that He will maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day requires,

so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no one else.

Your hearts therefore shall be wholly devoted to the Lord our God, to walk in His statutes and to keep His commandments, as at this day.”

So Solomon held the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of Egypt, before the Lord our God, for seven days and seven more days, that is, fourteen days.

God’s Promise and Warning

Now it came about when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the king’s house, and all that Solomon desired to do,

“But if you or your sons indeed turn away from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have placed before you, but you go and serve other gods and worship them,

And they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and worshiped and served them, for that reason the Lord has brought all this adversity on them.’”

Blessed be the Lord your God who delighted in you to put you on the throne of Israel; because the Lord loves Israel forever, He made you king, to do justice and righteousness.”

And all the earth was seeking the attention of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.

Solomon Turns from God

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women,

from the nations of which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you; they will certainly turn your heart away to follow their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love.

For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away to follow other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of his father David had been.

For Solomon became a follower of Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom the abhorrent idol of the Ammonites.

He also did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

Now the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice,

and had commanded him regarding this thing, that he was not to follow other gods; but he did not comply with what the Lord had commanded.

God Raises Adversaries

Then the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was of the royal line in Edom.

God also raised up another adversary against him, Rezon the son of Eliada, who had fled from his master Hadadezer, king of Zobah.

And he said to Jeroboam, “Take for yourself ten pieces; for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: ‘Behold, I am going to tear the kingdom away from the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes

because they have abandoned Me, and have worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the sons of Ammon; and they have not walked in My ways, doing what is right in My sight and keeping My statutes and My ordinances, as his father David did.

But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying,

So the king consulted, and he made two golden calves; and he said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold your gods, Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

Jeroboam Warned, Stricken

Now behold, a man of God came from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, while Jeroboam was standing at the altar to burn incense.