King Solomon

Solomon Becomes King

Chapter 1

¹King David was now old, advanced in years; and though they covered him with bedclothes, he never felt warm. ²His courtiers said to him, “Let a young virgin be sought for my lord the king, to wait upon Your Majesty and be his attendant; and let her lie in your bosom, and my lord the king will be warm.” ³So they looked for a beautiful girl throughout the territory of Israel. They found Abishag the Shunammite and brought her to the king. ⁴The girl was exceedingly beautiful. She became the king’s attendant and waited upon him; but the king was not intimate with her.

⁵Now Adonijah son of Haggith went about boasting, “I will be king!” He provided himself with chariots and horses, and an escort of fifty outrunners. ⁶His father had never scolded him: “Why did you do that?” He was the one born after Absalom and, like him, was very handsome.

⁷He conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with the priest Abiathar, and they supported Adonijah; ⁸but the priest Zadok, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, the prophet Nathan, Shimei and Rei, and David’s own fighting men did not side with Adonijah. ⁹Adonijah made a sacrificial feast of sheep, oxen, and fatlings at the Zoheleth stone which is near En-rogel; he invited all his brother princes and all the king’s courtiers of the tribe of Judah; ¹⁰but he did not invite the prophet Nathan, or Benaiah, or the fighting men, or his brother Solomon.

¹¹Then Nathan said to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “You must have heard that Adonijah son of Haggith has assumed the kingship without the knowledge of our lord David. ¹²Now take my advice, so that you may save your life and the life of your son Solomon. ¹³Go immediately to King David and say to him, ‘Did not you, O lord king, swear to your maidservant: “Your son Solomon shall succeed me as king, and he shall sit upon my throne”? Then why has Adonijah become king?’ ¹⁴While you are still there talking with the king, I will come in after you and confirm your words.”

¹⁵So Bathsheba went to the king in his chamber.— The king was very old, and Abishag the Shunammite was waiting on the king.—¹⁶Bathsheba bowed low in homage to the king; and the king asked, “What troubles you?” ¹⁷She answered him, “My lord, you yourself swore to your maidservant by the Lord your God: ‘Your son Solomon shall succeed me as king, and he shall sit upon my throne.’ ¹⁸Yet now Adonijah has become king, and you, my lord the king, know nothing about it. ¹⁹He has prepared a sacrificial feast of a great many oxen, fatlings, and sheep, and he has invited all the king’s sons and Abiathar the priest and Joab commander of the army; but he has not invited your servant Solomon. ²⁰And so the eyes of all Israel are upon you, O lord king, to tell them who shall succeed my lord the king on the throne. ²¹Otherwise, when my lord the king lies down with his fathers, my son Solomon and I will be regarded as traitors.”

²²She was still talking to the king when the prophet Nathan arrived. ²³They announced to the king, “The prophet Nathan is here,” and he entered the king’s presence. Bowing low to the king with his face to the ground, ²⁴Nathan said, “O lord king, you must have said, ‘Adonijah shall succeed me as king and he shall sit upon my throne.’ ²⁵For he has gone down today and prepared a sacrificial feast of a great many oxen, fatlings, and sheep. He invited all the king’s sons and the army officers and Abiathar the priest. At this very moment they are eating and drinking with him, and they are shouting, ‘Long live King Adonijah!’ ²⁶But he did not invite me your servant, or the priest Zadok, or Benaiah son of Jehoiada, or your servant Solomon. ²⁷Can this decision have come from my lord the king, without your telling your servant who is to succeed to the throne of my lord the king?”

²⁸King David’s response was: “Summon Bathsheba!” She entered the king’s presence and stood before the king. ²⁹And the king took an oath, saying, “As the Lord lives, who has rescued me from every trouble: ³⁰The oath I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, that your son Solomon should succeed me as king and that he should sit upon my throne in my stead, I will fulfill this very day!” ³¹Bathsheba bowed low in homage to the king with her face to the ground, and she said, “May my lord King David live forever!”

³²Then King David said, “Summon to me the priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada.” When they came before the king, ³³the king said to them, “Take my loyal soldiers, and have my son Solomon ride on my mule and bring him down to Gihon. ³⁴Let the priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan anoint him there king over Israel, whereupon you shall sound the horn and shout, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ ³⁵Then march up after him, and let him come in and sit on my throne. For he shall succeed me as king; him I designate to be ruler of Israel and Judah.” ³⁶Benaiah son of Jehoiada spoke up and said to the king, “Amen! And may the Lord, the God of my lord the king, so ordain. ³⁷As the Lord was with my lord the king, so may He be with Solomon; and may He exalt his throne even higher than the throne of my lord King David.”

³⁸Then the priest Zadok, and the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada went down with the Cherethites and the Pelethites. They had Solomon ride on King David’s mule and they led him to Gihon. ³⁹The priest Zadok took the horn of oil from the Tent and anointed Solomon. They sounded the horn and all the people shouted, “Long live King Solomon!” ⁴⁰All the people then marched up behind him, playing on flutes and making merry till the earth was split open by the uproar.

⁴¹Adonijah and all the guests who were with him, who had just finished eating, heard it. When Joab heard the sound of the horn, he said, “Why is the city in such an uproar?” ⁴²He was still speaking when the priest Jonathan son of Abiathar arrived. “Come in,” said Adonijah. “You are a worthy man, and you surely bring good news.” ⁴³But Jonathan replied to Adonijah, “Alas, our lord King David has made Solomon king! ⁴⁴The king sent with him the priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites and Pelethites. They had him ride on the king’s mule, ⁴⁵and the priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan anointed him king at Gihon. Then they came up from there making merry, and the city went into an uproar. That’s the noise you heard. ⁴⁶Further, Solomon seated himself on the royal throne; ⁴⁷further, the king’s courtiers came to congratulate our lord King David, saying, ‘May God make the renown of Solomon even greater than yours, and may He exalt his throne even higher than yours!’ And the king bowed low on his couch. ⁴⁸And further, this is what the king said, ‘Praised be the Lord, the God of Israel who has this day provided a successor to my throne, while my own eyes can see it.’” ⁴⁹Thereupon, all of Adonijah’s guests rose in alarm and each went his own way.

⁵⁰Adonijah, in fear of Solomon, went at once [to the Tent] and grasped the horns of the altar. ⁵¹It was reported to Solomon: “Adonijah is in fear of King Solomon and has grasped the horns of the altar, saying, ‘Let King Solomon first swear to me that he will not put his servant to the sword.’” ⁵²Solomon said, “If he behaves worthily, not a hair of his head shall fall to the ground; but if he is caught in any offense, he shall die.” ⁵³So King Solomon sent and had him taken down from the altar. He came and bowed before King Solomon, and Solomon said to him, “Go home.”

Chapter 2

¹When David’s life was drawing to a close, he instructed his son Solomon as follows: ²“I am going the way of all the earth; be strong and show yourself a man. ³Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and following His laws, His commandments, His rules, and His admonitions as recorded in the Teaching of Moses, in order that you may succeed in whatever you undertake and wherever you turn. ⁴Then the Lord will fulfill the promise that He made concerning me: ‘If your descendants are scrupulous in their conduct, and walk before Me faithfully, with all their heart and soul, your line on the throne of Israel shall never end!’

⁵“Further, you know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me, what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s forces, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether: he killed them, shedding blood of war in peacetime, staining the girdle of his loins and the sandals on his feet with blood of war. ⁶So act in accordance with your wisdom, and see that his white hair does not go down to Sheol in peace.

⁷“But deal graciously with the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, for they befriended me when I fled from your brother Absalom; let them be among those that eat at your table.

⁸“You must also deal with Shimei son of Gera, the Benjaminite from Bahurim. He insulted me outrageously when I was on my way to Mahanaim; but he came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by the Lord: ‘I will not put you to the sword.’ ⁹So do not let him go unpunished; for you are a wise man and you will know how to deal with him and send his gray hair down to Sheol in blood.”

¹⁰So David slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the City of David. ¹¹The length of David’s reign over Israel was forty years: he reigned seven years in Hebron, and he reigned thirty-three years in Jerusalem. ¹²And Solomon sat upon the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established.

¹³Adonijah son of Haggith came to see Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother. She said, “Do you come with friendly intent?” “Yes,” he replied; ¹⁴and he continued, “I would like to have a word with you.” “Speak up,” she said. ¹⁵Then he said, “You know that the kingship was rightly mine and that all Israel wanted me to reign. But the kingship passed on to my brother; it came to him by the will of the Lord. ¹⁶And now I have one request to make of you; do not refuse me.” She said, “Speak up.” ¹⁷He replied, “Please ask King Solomon—for he won’t refuse you—to give me Abishag the Shunammite as wife.” ¹⁸“Very well,” said Bathsheba, “I will speak to the king in your behalf.”

¹⁹So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him about Adonijah. The king rose to greet her and bowed down to her. He sat on his throne; and he had a throne placed for the queen mother, and she sat on his right. ²⁰She said, “I have one small request to make of you, do not refuse me.” He responded, “Ask, Mother; I shall not refuse you.” ²¹Then she said, “Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to your brother Adonijah as wife.” ²²The king replied to his mother, “Why request Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Request the kingship for him! For he is my older brother, and the priest Abiathar and Joab son of Zeruiah are on his side.”

²³Thereupon, King Solomon swore by the Lord, saying, “So may God do to me and even more, if broaching this matter does not cost Adonijah his life! ²⁴Now, as the Lord lives, who has established me and set me on the throne of my father David and who has provided him with a house, as he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death this very day!” ²⁵And Solomon instructed Benaiah son of Jehoiada, who struck Adonijah down; and so he died.

²⁶To the priest Abiathar, the king said, “Go to your estate at Anathoth! You deserve to die, but I shall not put you to death at this time, because you carried the Ark of my Lord God before my father David and because you shared all the hardships that my father endured.” ²⁷So Solomon dismissed Abiathar from his office of priest of the Lord—thus fulfilling what the Lord had spoken at Shiloh regarding the house of Eli.

²⁸When the news reached Joab, he fled to the Tent of the Lord and grasped the horns of the altar—for Joab had sided with Adonijah, though he had not sided with Absalom. ²⁹King Solomon was told that Joab had fled to the Tent of the Lord and that he was there by the altar; so Solomon sent Benaiah son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go and strike him down.” ³⁰Benaiah went to the Tent of the Lord and said to him, “Thus said the king: Come out!” “No!” he replied; “I will die here.” Benaiah reported back to the king that Joab had answered thus and thus, ³¹and the king said, “Do just as he said; strike him down and bury him, and remove guilt from me and my father’s house for the blood of the innocent that Joab has shed. ³²Thus the Lord will bring his blood guilt down upon his own head, because, unbeknown to my father, he struck down with the sword two men more righteous and honorable than he—Abner son of Ner, the army commander of Israel, and Amasa son of Jether, the army commander of Judah. ³³May the guilt for their blood come down upon the head of Joab and his descendants forever, and may good fortune from the Lord be granted forever to David and his descendants, his house and his throne.” ³⁴So Benaiah son of Jehoiada went up and struck him down. And he was buried at his home in the wilderness. ³⁵In his place, the king appointed Benaiah son of Jehoiada over the army, and in place of Abiathar, the king appointed the priest Zadok.

³⁶Then the king summoned Shimei and said to him, “Build yourself a house in Jerusalem and stay there— do not ever go out from there anywhere else. ³⁷On the very day that you go out and cross the Wadi Kidron, you can be sure that you will die; your blood shall be on your own head.” ³⁸“That is fair,” said Shimei to the king, “your servant will do just as my lord the king has spoken.” And for a long time, Shimei remained in Jerusalem.

³⁹Three years later, two slaves of Shimei ran away to King Achish son of Maacah of Gath. Shimei was told, “Your slaves are in Gath.” ⁴⁰Shimei thereupon saddled his ass and went to Achish in Gath to claim his slaves; and Shimei returned from Gath with his slaves. ⁴¹Solomon was told that Shimei had gone from Jerusalem to Gath and back, ⁴²and the king summoned Shimei and said to him, “Did I not adjure you by the Lord and warn you, ‘On the very day that you leave and go anywhere else, you can be sure that you will die,’ and did you not say to me, ‘It is fair; I accept’? ⁴³Why did you not abide by the oath before the Lord and by the orders which I gave you?” ⁴⁴The king said further to Shimei, “You know all the wrong, which you remember very well, that you did to my father David. Now the Lord brings down your wrongdoing upon your own head. ⁴⁵But King Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be established before the Lord forever.”

⁴⁶The king gave orders to Benaiah son of Jehoiada and he went out and struck Shimei down; and so he died.

Thus the kingdom was secured in Solomon’s hands.

Solomon is Granted Wisdom

Chapter 3

¹Solomon allied himself by marriage with Pharaoh king of Egypt. He married Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her to the City of David [to live there] until he had finished building his palace, and the House of the Lord, and the walls around Jerusalem.

²The people, however, continued to offer sacrifices at the open shrines, because up to that time no house had been built for the name of the Lord. ³And Solomon, though he loved the Lord and followed the practices of his father David, also sacrificed and offered at the shrines.

⁴The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the largest shrine; on that altar Solomon presented a thousand burnt offerings. ⁵At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask, what shall I grant you?” ⁶Solomon said, “You dealt most graciously with Your servant my father David, because he walked before You in faithfulness and righteousness and in integrity of heart. You have continued this great kindness to him by giving him a son to occupy his throne, as is now the case. ⁷And now, O Lord my God, You have made Your servant king in place of my father David; but I am a young lad, with no experience in leadership. ⁸Your servant finds himself in the midst of the people You have chosen, a people too numerous to be numbered or counted. ⁹Grant, then, Your servant an understanding mind to judge Your people, to distinguish between good and bad; for who can judge this vast people of Yours?”

¹⁰The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. ¹¹And God said to him, “Because you asked for this—you did not ask for long life, you did not ask for riches, you did not ask for the life of your enemies, but you asked for discernment in dispensing justice— ¹²I now do as you have spoken. I grant you a wise and discerning mind; there has never been anyone like you before, nor will anyone like you arise again. ¹³And I also grant you what you did not ask for—both riches and glory all your life—the like of which no king has ever had. ¹⁴And I will further grant you long life, if you will walk in My ways and observe My laws and commandments, as did your father David.”

¹⁵Then Solomon awoke: it was a dream! He went to Jerusalem, stood before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented offerings of well-being; and he made a banquet for all his courtiers.

¹⁶Later two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. ¹⁷The first woman said, “Please, my lord! This woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. ¹⁸On the third day after I was delivered, this woman also gave birth to a child. We were alone; there was no one else with us in the house, just the two of us in the house. ¹⁹During the night this woman’s child died, because she lay on it. ²⁰She arose in the night and took my son from my side while your maidservant was asleep, and laid him in her bosom; and she laid her dead son in my bosom. ²¹When I arose in the morning to nurse my son, there he was, dead; but when I looked at him closely in the morning, it was not the son I had borne.”

²²The other woman spoke up, “No, the live one is my son, and the dead one is yours!” But the first insisted, “No, the dead boy is yours; mine is the live one!” And they went on arguing before the king.

²³The king said, “One says, ‘This is my son, the live one, and the dead one is yours’; and the other says, ‘No, the dead boy is yours, mine is the live one.’ ²⁴So the king gave the order, “Fetch me a sword.” A sword was brought before the king, ²⁵and the king said, “Cut the live child in two, and give half to one and half to the other.”

²⁶But the woman whose son was the live one pleaded with the king, for she was overcome with compassion for her son. “Please, my lord,” she cried, “give her the live child; only don’t kill it!” The other insisted, “It shall be neither yours nor mine; cut it in two!” ²⁷Then the king spoke up. “Give the live child to her,” he said, “and do not put it to death; she is its mother.”

²⁸When all Israel heard the decision that the king had rendered, they stood in awe of the king; for they saw that he possessed divine wisdom to execute justice. [ . . . ]

Chapter 5

⁹God endowed Solomon with wisdom and discernment in great measure, with understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. ¹⁰Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the Kedemites and than all the wisdom of the Egyptians. ¹¹He was the wisest of all men: [wiser] than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Chalkol, and Darda the sons of Mahol. His fame spread among all the surrounding nations. ¹²He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered one thousand and five. ¹³He discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; and he discoursed about beasts, birds, creeping things, and fishes. ¹⁴Men of all peoples came to hear Solomon’s wisdom, [sent] by all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom. [ . . . ]

Building the Temple

Chapter 6

¹In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Isra-elites left the land of Egypt, in the month of Ziv—that is, the second month—in the fourth year of his reign over Israel, Solomon began to build the House of the Lord. ²The House which King Solomon built for the Lord was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. ³The portico in front of the Great Hall of the House was 20 cubits long—along the width of the House—and 10 cubits deep to the front of the House. ⁴He made windows for the House, recessed and latticed. ⁵Against the outside wall of the House—the outside walls of the House enclosing the Great Hall and the Shrine^a—he built a storied structure; and he made side chambers allaround. [ . . . ]

⁷When the House was built, only finished stones cut at the quarry were used, so that no hammer or ax or any iron tool was heard in the House while it was being built. [ . . . ]

¹⁵[H]e paneled the walls of the House on the inside with planks of cedar. He also overlaid the walls on the inside with wood, from the floor of the House to the ceiling. And he overlaid the floor of the House with planks of cypress. ¹⁶Twenty cubits from the rear of the House, he built [a partition] of cedar planks from the floor to the walls; he furnished its interior to serve as a shrine, as the Holy of Holies. [ . . . ] ¹⁸The cedar of the interior of the House had carvings of gourds and calyxes; it was all cedar, no stone was exposed. ¹⁹In the innermost part of the House, he fixed a Shrine in which to place the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant. [ . . . ] ²²[ . . . ] the entire House was overlaid with gold; he even overlaid with gold the entire altar of the Shrine. And so the entire House was completed.

²³In the Shrine he made two cherubim of olive wood, each 10 cubits high. ²⁴[One] had a wing measuring 5 cubits and another wing measuring 5 cubits, so that the spread from wingtip to wingtip was 10 cubits; ²⁵and the wingspread of the other cherub was also 10 cubits. The two cherubim had the same measurements and proportions: ²⁶the height of the one cherub was 10 cubits, and so was that of the other cherub.

²⁷He placed the cherubim inside the ^binner chamber.^bSince the wings of the cherubim were extended, a wing of the one touched one wall and a wing of the other touched the other wall, while their wings in the center of the chamber touched each other. ²⁸He overlaid the cherubim with gold. ²⁹All over the walls of the House, of both the inner area and the outer area, he carved reliefs of cherubim, palms, and calyxes, ³⁰and he overlaid the floor of the House with gold, both the inner and the outer areas. [ . . . ]

³⁷In the fourth year, in the month of Ziv, the foundations of the House were laid; ³⁸and in the eleventh year, in the month of Bul—that is, the eighth month—the House was completed according to all its details and all its specifications. It took him seven years to build it. [ . . . ]

The Visit of the Queen of Sheba

Chapter 10

¹The queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame, ^cthrough the name of the Lord,^cand she came to test him with hard questions. ²She arrived in Jerusalem with a very large retinue, with camels bearing spices, a great quantity of gold, and precious stones. When she came to Solomon, she asked him all that she had in mind. ³Solomon had answers for all her questions; there was nothing that the king did not know, [nothing] to which he could not give her an answer. ⁴When the queen of Sheba observed all of Solomon’s wisdom, and the palace he had built, ⁵the fare of his table, the seating of his courtiers, the service and attire of his attendants, and his wine service, ^dand the burnt offerings that he offered at^dthe House of the Lord, she was left breathless.

⁶She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own land about you and your wisdom was true. ⁷But I did not believe the reports until I came and saw with my own eyes that not even the half had been told me; your wisdom and wealth surpass the reports that I heard. ⁸How fortunate are your men and how fortunate are these your courtiers, who are always in attendance on you and can hear your wisdom! ⁹Praised be the Lord your God, who delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel. It is because of the Lord’s everlasting love for Israel that He made you king to administer justice and righteousness.”

¹⁰She presented the king with one hundred and twenty talents of gold, and a large quantity of spices, and precious stones. Never again did such a vast quantity of spices arrive as that which the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. [ . . . ]

Solomon’s Apostasy

Chapter 11

¹King Solomon loved many foreign women in addition to Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Phoenician, and Hittite women, ²from the nations of which the Lord had said to the Israelites, “None of you shall join them and none of them shall join you,^e lest they turn your heart away to follow their gods.” Such Solomon clung to and loved. ³He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned his heart away. ⁴In his old age, his wives turned away Solomon’s heart after other gods, and he was not as wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God as his father David had been. ⁵Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Phoenicians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

⁶Solomon did what was displeasing to the Lord and did not remain loyal to the Lord like his father David. ⁷At that time, Solomon built a shrine for Chemosh the abomination of Moab on the hill near Jerusalem, and one for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites. ⁸And he did the same for all his foreign wives who offered and sacrificed to their gods.

⁹The Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice ¹⁰and had commanded him about this matter, not to follow other gods; he did not obey what the Lord had commanded. ¹¹And the Lord said to Solomon, ^f“Because you are guilty of this^f—you have not kept My covenant and the laws which I enjoined upon you—I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants. ¹²But, for the sake of your father David, I will not do it in your lifetime; I will tear it away from your son. ¹³However, I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give your son one tribe, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.” [ . . . ]

Solomon’s Death

⁴¹The other events of Solomon’s reign, and all his actions and his wisdom, are recorded in the book of the Annals of Solomon. ⁴²The length of Solomon’s reign in Jerusalem, over all Israel, was forty years. ⁴³Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of his father David; and his son Rehoboam succeeded him as king.