Second Book of Chronicles 8

¹ At the end of the twenty years which it took Solomon to build the Temple of Yahweh and his own palace,

² he rebuilt the towns that Huram had given him and settled Israelites in them.

³ He then went to Hamath of Zobah, which he captured;

⁴ he rebuilt Tadmor in the wilderness[*a] and all the garrison towns he had built in Hamath.

⁵ He rebuilt Upper Beth-horon and Lower Beth-horon, fortified towns with walls and gates and bars,

⁶ also Baalath and all the garrison towns owned by Solomon, all the towns for his chariots and horses, and all it pleased Solomon to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and in all the countries subject to him.

⁷ All those who survived of the Hittite, Amorite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite peoples, who were not Israelites

⁸ and whose descendants were left in the country after them, and not exterminated by the Israelites, these Solomon levied for forced labour, as they are levied still.

⁹ On the Israelites, however, Solomon did not impose slave-labour; these served as fighting men: they were officers of his equerries and his chariot and cavalry commanders.

¹⁰ These were the administrators’ officials in the service of King Solomon: two hundred and fifty in charge of the people.

¹¹ Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter from the Citadel of David up to the house he had built for her. ‘It is not for me’ he said ‘to let a woman live in the palace of David king of Israel; these are holy places, where the ark of Yahweh has been.’

¹² Solomon then offered holocausts to Yahweh on Yahweh’s altar which he had built in front of the porch.

¹³ Observing the daily rule for holocausts laid down in the commandment of Moses for sabbath, New Moon and the three annual feasts: the feast of Unleavened Bread, the feast of Weeks and the feast of Tabernacles,

¹⁴ he maintained the regulations of his father David, as also the priestly orders in their duties, the rules affecting the Levites who offered praise and served with the priests according to the daily ritual, and the different orders of gatekeepers at each gate, for such had been the commandments of David, the man of God.

¹⁵ They did not deviate in anything, not even in the matter of the treasuries, from the royal ordinances applying to the priests and the Levites.

¹⁶ And all Solomon’s work which, until the day when the foundations of the Temple of Yahweh were laid, had been only in preparation, was completed when the Temple of Yahweh was finished.

¹⁷ Then Solomon went as far as Ezion-geber and Elath on the shores of the sea, in the land of Edom.

¹⁸ Huram sent him ships manned by his own men, and experienced sailors. These went with Solomon’s men to Ophir and from there they brought back four hundred and fifty talents of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.