April 20

1 Kings 10:1 — 11:43

10 Now the queen of Sheba was hearing the report about Solomon in connection with the name of Jehovah. So she came to test him with perplexing questions. 2 Finally she arrived at Jerusalem with a very impressive train, camels carrying balsam oil and very much gold and precious stones; and she came on in to Solomon and began to speak to him all that happened to be close to her heart. 3 Solomon, in turn, went on to tell her all her matters. There proved to be no matter hidden from the king that he did not tell her.

4 When the queen of Sheba got to see all the wisdom of Solomon and the house that he had built, 5 and the food of his table and the sitting of his servants and the table service of his waiters and their attire and his drinks and his burnt sacrifices that he regularly offered up at the house of Jehovah, then there proved to be no more spirit in her. 6 So she said to the king: “True has the word proved to be that I heard in my own land about your matters and about your wisdom. 7 And I did not put faith in the words until I had come that my own eyes might see; and, look! I had not been told the half. You have surpassed in wisdom and prosperity the things heard to which I listened. 8 Happy are your men; happy are these servants of yours who are standing before you constantly, listening to your wisdom! 9 May Jehovah your God come to be blessed, who has taken delight in you by putting you upon the throne of Israel; because Jehovah loves Israel to time indefinite, so that he appointed you as king to render judicial decision and righteousness.”

10 Then she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold and a very great deal of balsam oil and precious stones. There never came anymore the like of that balsam oil for quantity such as the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

11 And Hiram’s fleet of ships that carried gold from Ophir also brought from Ophir timbers of algum trees in very great amount and precious stones. 12 And the king proceeded to make out of the timbers of the algum trees supports for the house of Jehovah and for the house of the king, and also harps and stringed instruments for the singers. Timbers of algum trees like this have not come in nor have they been seen down to this day.

13 And King Solomon himself gave the queen of Sheba all her delight for which she asked, apart from what he gave her according to the openhandedness of King Solomon. After that she turned about and went to her own land, she together with her servants.

14 And the weight of the gold that came to Solomon in one year amounted up to six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, 15 apart from the men of travel and the profit from the traders and all the kings of the Arabs and the governors of the land.

16 And King Solomon went on to make two hundred large shields of alloyed gold (six hundred [shekels] of gold he proceeded to lay upon each large shield), 17 and three hundred bucklers of alloyed gold (three minas of gold he proceeded to lay upon each buckler). Then the king put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon.

18 Further, the king made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with refined gold. 19 There were six steps to the throne, and the throne had a round canopy behind it, and there were armrests on this side and on that side by the place of sitting, and two lions were standing beside the armrests. 20 And there were twelve lions standing there upon the six steps, on this side and on that side. No other kingdom had any made just like it.

21 And all the drinking vessels of King Solomon were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. There was nothing of silver; it was considered in the days of Solomon as nothing at all. 22 For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish on the sea along with Hiram’s fleet of ships. Once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish would come carrying gold and silver, ivory, and apes and peacocks.

23 So King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. 24 And all the people of the earth were seeking the face of Solomon to hear his wisdom that God had put in his heart. 25 And they were bringing each his gift, articles of silver and articles of gold and garments and armor and balsam oil, horses and mules, as a yearly matter of course.

26 And Solomon kept gathering more chariots and steeds; and he came to have a thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand steeds, and he kept them stationed in the chariot cities and close by the king in Jerusalem.

27 And the king came to make the silver in Jerusalem like the stones, and cedarwood he made like the sycamore trees that are in the Shephelah for great quantity.

28 And there was the export of the horses that Solomon had from Egypt, and the company of the king’s merchants would themselves take the horse drove for a price. 29 And a chariot customarily came up and was exported from Egypt for six hundred silver pieces, and a horse for a hundred and fifty; and that was the way it was for all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria. It was by means of them that they did the exporting.


11 And King Solomon himself loved many foreign wives along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian [and] Hittite women, 2 from the nations of whom Jehovah had said to the sons of Israel: “YOU must not go in among them, and they themselves should not come in among YOU; truly they will incline YOUR heart to follow their gods.” It was to them that Solomon clung to love [them]. 3 And he came to have seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives gradually inclined his heart. 4 And it came about in the time of Solomon’s growing old that his wives themselves had inclined his heart to follow other gods; and his heart did not prove to be complete with Jehovah his God like the heart of David his father. 5 And Solomon began going after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and after Milcom the disgusting thing of the Ammonites. 6 And Solomon began to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, and he did not follow Jehovah fully like David his father.

7 It was then that Solomon proceeded to build a high place to Chemosh the disgusting thing of Moab on the mountain that was in front of Jerusalem, and to Molech the disgusting thing of the sons of Ammon. 8 And that was the way he did for all his foreign wives who were making sacrificial smoke and sacrificing to their gods.

9 And Jehovah came to be incensed at Solomon, because his heart had inclined away from Jehovah the God of Israel, the one appearing to him twice. 10 And respecting this thing he commanded him not to go after other gods; but he had not kept that which Jehovah had commanded. 11 Jehovah now said to Solomon: “For the reason that this has taken place with you and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I laid in command upon you, I shall without fail rip the kingdom away from off you, and I shall certainly give it to your servant. 12 However, in your days I shall not do it, for the sake of David your father. Out of the hand of your son I shall rip it away. 13 Only it will not be all the kingdom that I shall rip away. One tribe I shall give to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.”

14 And Jehovah began to raise up a resister to Solomon, namely, Hadad the Edomite of the offspring of the king. He was in Edom. 15 And it came about when David struck down Edom, when Joab the chief of the army came up to bury those slain, that he tried to strike down every male in Edom. 16 (For it was six months that Joab and all Israel dwelt there until he had cut off every male in Edom.) 17 And Hadad went running away, he and some Edomite men of the servants of his father with him, to come into Egypt, while Hadad was a young boy. 18 So they rose up out of Midian and came into Paran and took men with them from Paran and came into Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt, who then gave him a house. Also, bread he assigned to him, and land he gave him. 19 And Hadad continued to find favor in the eyes of Pharaoh, so much that he gave him a wife, the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tahpenes the lady. 20 In time the sister of Tahpenes bore him Genubath his son, and Tahpenes got to wean him right inside the house of Pharaoh; and Genubath continued at the house of Pharaoh right among the sons of Pharaoh.

21 And Hadad himself heard in Egypt that David had lain down with his forefathers and that Joab the chief of the army had died. So Hadad said to Pharaoh: “Send me away, that I may go to my own land.” 22 But Pharaoh said to him: “What are you in need of while with me that here you are seeking to go to your own land?” To this he said: “Nothing; but you ought to send me away without fail.”

23 And God proceeded to raise up to him another resister, namely, Rezon the son of Eliada, who had run away from Hadadezer the king of Zobah his lord. 24 And he kept collecting men to his side and came to be chief of a marauder band, when David killed them. So they went to Damascus and took up dwelling in it and began reigning in Damascus. 25 And he came to be a resister of Israel all the days of Solomon, and that along with the injury that Hadad did; and he had an abhorrence of Israel while he continued reigning over Syria.

26 And there was Jeroboam the son of Nebat an Ephraimite from Zeredah, a servant of Solomon, and his mother’s name was Zeruah, a widowed woman. He too began to lift up his hand against the king. 27 And this is the reason why he lifted up his hand against the king: Solomon himself had built the Mound. He had closed up the gap of the City of David his father. 28 Now the man Jeroboam was a valiant, mighty man. When Solomon got to see that the young man was a hard worker, he proceeded to make him overseer over all the compulsory service of the house of Joseph. 29 And it came about at that particular time that Jeroboam himself went out from Jerusalem, and Ahijah the Shilonite the prophet got to find him on the road, and [Ahijah] was covering himself with a new garment; and the two of them were by themselves in the field. 30 Ahijah now took hold of the new garment that was on him and ripped it into twelve pieces. 31 And he went on to say to Jeroboam:

“Take for yourself ten pieces; for this is what Jehovah the God of Israel has said, ‘Here I am ripping the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and I shall certainly give you ten tribes. 32 And the one tribe is what will continue his for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel. 33 The reason why is that they have left me and begun to bow down to Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, to Chemosh the god of Moab and to Milcom the god of the sons of Ammon; and they have not walked in my ways by doing what is right in my eyes and my statutes and my judicial decisions like David his father. 34 But I shall not take the entire kingdom out of his hand, because a chieftain I shall set him for all the days of his life, for the sake of David my servant whom I chose, because he kept my commandments and my statutes. 35 And I shall certainly take the kingship out of the hand of his son and give it to you, even ten tribes. 36 And to his son I shall give one tribe, in order that David my servant may continue having a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen for myself to put my name there. 37 And you are the one that I shall take, and you will indeed reign over all that your soul craves, and you will certainly become king over Israel. 38 And it must occur that, if you obey all that I shall command you, and you do walk in my ways and actually do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, just as David my servant did, I will also prove to be with you, and I will build you a lasting house, just as I have built for David, and I will give you Israel. 39 And I shall humiliate the offspring of David on account of this, only not always.’”

40 And Solomon began seeking to put Jeroboam to death. So Jeroboam got up and went running off to Egypt to Shishak the king of Egypt, and he continued in Egypt until Solomon’s death.

41 As for the rest of the affairs of Solomon and all that he did and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the affairs of Solomon? 42 And the days that Solomon had reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel were forty years. 43 Then Solomon lay down with his forefathers, and was buried in the City of David his father; and Rehoboam his son began to reign in place of him.