The Shekinah Glory

7 When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the [^[a]Shekinah] glory and brilliance of the Lord filled the house.^{(A) 2} The priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory and brilliance of the Lord had filled the Lord’s house. ³ When all the people of Israel saw how the fire came down and saw the glory and brilliance of the Lord upon the house, they bowed down on the stone pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, “For He is good, for His mercy and lovingkindness endure forever.”

Sacrifices Offered

⁴ Then the king and all the people offered a sacrifice before the Lord. ⁵ King Solomon offered a sacrifice of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. In this way the king and all the people dedicated God’s house. ⁶ The priests stood at their posts [ready for service], and the Levites also, with the musical instruments of the Lord which King David had made to praise the Lord, saying, “For His lovingkindness and mercy endure forever,” whenever David offered praise through their ministry. The priests were opposite the Levites blowing the trumpets and all Israel was standing.

⁷ Moreover, Solomon consecrated the middle of the courtyard that was in front of the house of the Lord, for it was there that he offered burnt offerings and the fat of the peace offerings because the bronze altar which he had made was not sufficient to hold the burnt offerings, the grain offerings, and the fat [all together].

The Feast of Dedication

⁸ At that time Solomon observed the feast for seven days, and all Israel with him, a very large assembly, from the entrance of Hamath to the Brook of Egypt. ⁹ On the eighth day they held a celebration, for they had observed the dedication of the altar for seven days, and the feast for seven days. ¹⁰ And on the twenty-third day of the seventh month Solomon sent the people to their tents, rejoicing and happy in heart because of the goodness that the Lord had shown to David, to Solomon, and to His people Israel.

God’s Promise and Warning

¹¹ And so Solomon finished the house (temple) of the Lord and the palace of the king. He successfully accomplished all that he had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his palace.

¹² Then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. ¹³ If I shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or if I command locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence and plague among My people, ¹⁴ and My people, who are called by My Name, humble themselves, and pray and seek (crave, require as a necessity) My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear [them] from heaven, and forgive their sin and heal their land. ¹⁵ Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer offered in this place. ¹⁶ For now I have chosen and sanctified and set apart for My purpose this house that My Name may be here forever, and My eyes and My heart will be here perpetually. ¹⁷ As for you [Solomon], if you will ^[b]walk before me as your father David walked, and do everything that I have commanded you, and observe My statutes and My ordinances,^{(B) 18} then I will establish your royal throne just as I covenanted with your father David, saying, ‘You will not fail to have a man as ruler in Israel.’

¹⁹ “But if you [people] turn away and abandon My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and you go and serve other gods and worship them, ²⁰ then I will uproot Israel from My land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have consecrated for My Name, out of My sight, and will make it a proverb and an object of scorn among all nations.^{(C) 21} And as for this house, which was so exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and appalled and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ ²² Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this adversity and evil on them.’”

Solomon’s Activities and Accomplishments

8 Now it came about at the end of the twenty years, in which Solomon had built the house of the Lord and his own house (palace), ² that he built and fortified ^[c]the cities which Huram (Hiram) had given to him, and settled the Israelites there.

³ Then Solomon went to Hamath-zobah and captured it. ⁴ He built Tadmor in the wilderness, and all his storage cities in Hamath. ⁵ He also built upper Beth-horon and lower Beth-horon, fortified cities with walls, gates, and bars [to lock the gates]; ⁶ and Baalath and all the storage cities that Solomon had, and all the cities for his chariots and the cities for his horsemen, and all that Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land under his rule.

⁷ All the people who were left of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of Israel, ⁸ but were descendants of those who were left in the land, whom the Israelites had not destroyed—Solomon brought them up as forced laborers to this day. ⁹ But Solomon did not make slaves of the Israelites for his work; they were men of war, his chief captains, and commanders of his chariots and his horsemen. ¹⁰ These were the chief officers of King Solomon, two hundred and fifty [in authority] who ruled over the people.

¹¹ Then Solomon brought the daughter of Pharaoh up from the City of David into the house (palace) he had built for her, for he said, “My wife shall not live in the house of David king of Israel, because the places where the ark of the Lord has entered are holy.”

¹² Then Solomon offered burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar of the Lord which he had built in front of the porch [of the temple], ¹³ a certain number every day, offering them up as Moses commanded for the Sabbaths, the New Moons, and the three annual feasts—the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles).

¹⁴ Now in accordance with the ordinance of his father David, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their service, and the Levites for their duties of praise and ministering and serving before the priests as every day required, and the gatekeepers by their divisions at every gate; for David the man of God had so commanded. ¹⁵ And they did not deviate from the commandment of the king to the priests and Levites in any respect or in regard to the storehouses or treasuries.

¹⁶ Thus all the work of Solomon was carried out from the day the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid until it was finished. So the house of the Lord was completed.

¹⁷ Then Solomon went to Ezion-geber and to Eloth on the shore of the [Red] Sea in the land of Edom. ¹⁸ And Huram (Hiram) sent him, by his servants, ships and servants familiar with the sea; and they went with Solomon’s servants to Ophir, and took from there four hundred and fifty talents of gold, and brought them to King Solomon.