Chronological Plan

¹Now Solomon formed a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the LORD, and the wall around Jerusalem.

²The people were still sacrificing on the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the LORD until those days.

³Now Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except that he was sacrificing and burning incense on the high places.

⁴And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, because that was the great high place; Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

⁵In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, “Ask what you wish Me to give you.”

⁶Then Solomon said, “You have shown great faithfulness to Your servant David my father, according as he walked before You in truth, righteousness, and uprightness of heart toward You; and You have reserved for him this great faithfulness, that You have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day.

⁷And now, LORD my God, You have made Your servant king in place of my father David, yet I am like a little boy; I do not know how to go out or come in.

⁸And Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You have chosen, a great people who are too many to be numbered or counted.

⁹So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, to discern between good and evil. For who is capable of judging this great people of Yours?”

¹⁰Now it was pleasing in the sight of the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing.

¹¹And God said to him, “Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for yourself a long life, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the lives of your enemies, but have asked for yourself discernment to understand justice,

¹²behold, I have done according to your words. Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you.

¹³I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you all your days.

¹⁴And if you walk in My ways, keeping My statutes and commandments, as your father David walked, then I will prolong your days.”

¹⁵Then Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and made peace offerings, and held a feast for all his servants.

¹⁶Then two women who were prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.

¹⁷The one woman said, “Pardon me, my lord: this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house.

¹⁸And it happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house.

¹⁹Then this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him.

²⁰So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your servant was asleep, and she laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast.

²¹When I got up in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead! But when I examined him closely in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne!”

²²Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” So they spoke before the king.

²³Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’ ”

²⁴And the king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king.

²⁵And the king said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”

²⁶But the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son, and she said, “Pardon me, my lord! Give her the living child, and by no means kill him!” But the other woman was saying, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; cut him!”

²⁷Then the king replied, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.”

²⁸When all Israel heard about the judgment which the king had handed down, they feared the king, because they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice.

¹Now King Solomon was king over all Israel.

²These were his officials: Azariah the son of Zadok was the priest;

³Elihoreph and Ahijah, the sons of Shisha were scribes; Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was the secretary;

⁴and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the army; and Zadok and Abiathar were priests;

⁵and Azariah the son of Nathan was over the deputies; and Zabud the son of Nathan, a priest, was the king’s confidant;

⁶and Ahishar was over the household; and Adoniram the son of Abda was over the forced labor.

⁷Solomon had twelve deputies over all Israel, who provided food for the king and his household; each deputy had to provide food for a month in the year.

⁸And these were their names: Ben-hur, in the hill country of Ephraim;

⁹Ben-deker in Makaz and Shaalbim, and Beth-shemesh, and Elonbeth-hanan;

¹⁰Ben-hesed in Arubboth (Socoh was his and all the land of Hepher);

¹¹Ben-abinadab in all the hills of Dor (Taphath the daughter of Solomon was his wife);

¹²Baana the son of Ahilud in Taanach and Megiddo, and all Beth-shean which is beside Zarethan below Jezreel, from Beth-shean to Abel-meholah as far as the other side of Jokmeam;

¹³Ben-geber in Ramoth-gilead (the villages of Jair, the son of Manasseh, which are in Gilead were his: the region of Argob, which is in Bashan, sixty great cities with walls and bronze bars were his);

¹⁴Ahinadab the son of Iddo in Mahanaim;

¹⁵Ahimaaz in Naphtali (he also married Basemath the daughter of Solomon);

¹⁶Baana the son of Hushai in Asher and Bealoth;

¹⁷Jehoshaphat the son of Paruah in Issachar;

¹⁸Shimei the son of Ela in Benjamin;

¹⁹Geber the son of Uri in the land of Gilead, the country of Sihon king of the Amorites and of Og king of Bashan; and he was the only deputy who was in the land.

²⁰Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance; they were eating, drinking, and rejoicing.

²¹Now Solomon was ruling over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt; they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

²²Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty kors of fine flour and sixty kors of meal,

²³ten fat oxen, twenty pasture-fed oxen, and a hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened geese.

²⁴For he was ruling over everything west of the Euphrates River, from Tiphsah even to Gaza, over all the kings west of the River; and he had peace on all sides surrounding him.

²⁵So Judah and Israel lived securely, everyone under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.

²⁶Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.

²⁷And those deputies provided food for King Solomon and all who came to King Solomon’s table, each in his month; they allowed nothing to be lacking.

²⁸They also brought barley and straw for the war horses and baggage horses to the place where it was required, each deputy according to his duty.

²⁹Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore.

³⁰Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.

³¹For he was wiser than all other people, more than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was known in all the surrounding nations.

³²He also told three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005.

³³He told of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall; he told also of animals, birds, crawling things, and fish.

³⁴People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

¹Now Solomon the son of David established himself securely over his kingdom, and the LORD his God was with him and exalted him greatly.

²And Solomon spoke to all Israel, to the commanders of thousands, of hundreds, and to the judges and to every leader in all Israel, the heads of the fathers’ households.

³Then Solomon and all the assembly with him went to the high place which was at Gibeon, because God’s tent of meeting was there which Moses, the servant of the LORD had made in the wilderness.

⁴However, David had brought up the ark of God from Kiriath-jearim to the place he had prepared for it, for he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem.

⁵Now the bronze altar which Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made was there before the tabernacle of the LORD, and Solomon and the assembly sought it out.

⁶And Solomon went up there before the LORD to the bronze altar which was at the tent of meeting, and offered a thousand burnt offerings on it.

⁷In that night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, “Ask what I shall give you.”

⁸And Solomon said to God, “You have dealt with my father David with great faithfulness, and have made me king in his place.

⁹Now, LORD God, Your promise to my father David is fulfilled, for You have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth.

¹⁰Now give me wisdom and knowledge, so that I may go out and come in before this people, for who can rule this great people of Yours?”

¹¹Then God said to Solomon, “Because this was in your heart, and you did not ask for riches, wealth, or honor, or the life of those who hate you, nor did you even ask for long life, but you asked for yourself wisdom and knowledge so that you may rule My people over whom I have made you king,

¹²wisdom and knowledge have been granted to you. I will also give you riches, wealth, and honor, such as none of the kings who were before you has possessed, nor will those who will come after you.”

¹³So Solomon went from the high place which was at Gibeon, from the tent of meeting, to Jerusalem, and he reigned over Israel.

¹⁴Solomon amassed chariots and horsemen. He had 1,400 chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, and he stationed them in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem.

¹⁵The king made silver and gold as plentiful in Jerusalem as stones, and he made cedars as plentiful as sycamores in the lowland.

¹⁶Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue; the king’s traders acquired them from Kue for a price.

¹⁷They imported chariots from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver apiece, horses for 150 apiece, and by the same means they exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Aram.