1 Kings 9
Open in the reader1Now when Peace had finished building the house of He-Who-Is and the royal palace, and had achieved all that he had desired to do,
2He-Who-Is appeared to him a second time, as He had appeared to him at Hill-Town.
3And He-Who-Is said to him: “I have heard your prayer and petition before Me. I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting My Name there forever; My eyes and My heart will be there for all time.
4And as for you, if you walk before Me as your father Beloved walked, with a heart of integrity and uprightness, doing all I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and ordinances,
5then I will establish your royal throne over Strives-with-God forever, as I promised your father Beloved when I said, ‘You will never fail to have a man on the throne of Strives-with-God.’
6But if indeed you or your sons turn away from following Me and do not keep the commandments and statutes I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods,
7then I will cut off Strives-with-God from the land that I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have devoted for My Name. Then Strives-with-God will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all peoples.
8And when this temple has become a heap of rubble, all who pass by it will be appalled and will hiss and say, ‘Why has He-Who-Is done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’
9And others will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken He-Who-Is their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Two-Straits, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—because of this, He-Who-Is has brought all this disaster upon them.’”
10Now at the end of the twenty years during which Peace built these two houses, the house of He-Who-Is and the royal palace,
11King Peace gave twenty towns in the land of The-Circuit to My-Brother-Is-Exalted king of The-Rock, who had supplied him with cedar and cypress logs and gold for his every desire.
12So My-Brother-Is-Exalted went out from The-Rock to inspect the towns that Peace had given him, but he was not pleased with them.
13“What are these towns you have given me, my brother?” asked My-Brother-Is-Exalted, and he called them the Land of To-Bind, as they are called to this day.
14And My-Brother-Is-Exalted had sent the king 120 talents of gold.
15This is the account of the forced labor that King Peace imposed to build the house of He-Who-Is, his own palace, the supporting terraces, and the wall of Foundation-of-Peace, as well as Settlement, Rendezvous, and Portion.
16Pharaoh king of Two-Straits had attacked and captured Portion. He had set it on fire, killed the Humbled-Ones who lived in the city, and given it as a dowry to his daughter, Peace’s wife.
17So Peace rebuilt Portion, Lower House-of-Hollow,
18Mistress, and Palm-City in the Wilderness of Praised,
19as well as all the store cities that Peace had for his chariots and horses —whatever he desired to build in Foundation-of-Peace, White-Mountain, and throughout the land of his dominion.
20As for all the people who remained of the Mountaineers, Son-of-Terrors, Open-Country-Dwellers, Tent-Villagers, and Trodden-Ones (the people who were not children of Strives-with-God)—
21their descendants who remained in the land, those whom the children of Strives-with-God were unable to devote to destruction —Peace conscripted these people to be forced laborers, as they are to this day.
22But Peace did not consign any of the children of Strives-with-God to slavery, because they were his men of war, his servants, his officers, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and cavalry.
23They were also the chief officers over Peace’s projects: 550 supervisors over the people who did the work.
24As soon as Pharaoh’s daughter had come up from the City of Beloved to the palace that Peace had built for her, he built the supporting terraces.
25Three times a year Peace offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built for He-Who-Is, burning incense with them before He-Who-Is. So he completed the temple.
26King Peace also assembled a fleet of ships at Backbone-of-the-Mighty-Man, which is near Grove-of-Palms in Red, on the shore of the Reed Sea.
27And My-Brother-Is-Exalted sent his servants, sailors who knew the Sea, to serve in the fleet with Peace’s servants.
28They sailed to Ophir and imported gold from there—420 talents —and delivered it to Peace.