While you are still there talking to the king, I will come in and add my word to what you have said.”

There have Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him king over Israel. Blow the trumpet and shout, ‘Long live King Solomon!’

and Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king at Gihon. From there they have gone up cheering, and the city resounds with it. That’s the noise you hear.

May the guilt of their blood rest on the head of Joab and his descendants forever. But on David and his descendants, his house and his throne, may there be the Lord’s peace forever.”

Then the king sent for Shimei and said to him, “Build yourself a house in Jerusalem and live there, but do not go anywhere else.

I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.

One of them said, “Pardon me, my lord. This woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was there with me.

The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.

The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t the son I had borne.”

But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side, and there is no adversary or disaster.

I intend, therefore, to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God, as the Lord told my father David, when he said, ‘Your son whom I will put on the throne in your place will build the temple for my Name.’

My men will haul them down from Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea, and I will float them as rafts by sea to the place you specify. There I will separate them and you can take them away. And you are to grant my wish by providing food for my royal household.”

The Lord gave Solomon wisdom, just as he had promised him. There were peaceful relations between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them made a treaty.

Against the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary he built a structure around the building, in which there were side rooms.

The entrance to the lowest floor was on the south side of the temple; a stairway led up to the middle level and from there to the third.

He prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the ark of the covenant of the Lord there.

On the inside of the stand there was an opening that had a circular frame one cubit deep. This opening was round, and with its basework it measured a cubit and a half. Around its opening there was engraving. The panels of the stands were square, not round.

At the top of the stand there was a circular band half a cubit deep. The supports and panels were attached to the top of the stand.

Solomon left all these things unweighed, because there were so many; the weight of the bronze was not determined.

These poles were so long that their ends could be seen from the Holy Place in front of the inner sanctuary, but not from outside the Holy Place; and they are still there today.

There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites after they came out of Egypt.

While the whole assembly of Israel was standing there, the king turned around and blessed them.

‘Since the day I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built so that my Name might be there, but I have chosen David to rule my people Israel.’

I have provided a place there for the ark, in which is the covenant of the Lord that he made with our ancestors when he brought them out of Egypt.”

and said: “Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below—you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way.