Are you not aware of what I and my predecessors have done to all the nations of the surrounding lands? Have the gods of the surrounding lands actually been able to rescue their lands from my power?

Solomon acquired horses from Egypt and from all the lands.

When your people come to their senses in the land where they are held prisoner, they will repent and beg for your mercy in the land of their imprisonment, admitting, ‘We have sinned and gone astray, we have done evil!’

The people of the land executed all who had conspired against King Amon, and they made his son Josiah king in his place.

King Solomon was wealthier and wiser than any of the kings of the earth.

Then Solomon went to Ezion Geber and to Elat on the coast in the land of Edom.

She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your wise sayings and insight was true!

He ruled all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines as far as the border of Egypt.

Yet they will become his subjects, so they can experience how serving me differs from serving the surrounding nations.”

He appointed judges throughout the land and in each of the fortified cities of Judah.

He remained in hiding in God’s temple for six years, while Athaliah was ruling over the land.

All the people of the land celebrated, for the city had rest now that they had killed Athaliah.

They talked about the God of Jerusalem as if he were one of the man-made gods of the nations of the earth.

The people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and made him king in his father’s place in Jerusalem.

The king of Egypt prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem and imposed on the land a special tax of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

“The time will come when the land suffers from a famine, a plague, blight, and disease, or a locust invasion, or when their enemy lays siege to the cities of the land, or when some other type of plague or epidemic occurs.

When they return to you with all their heart and being in the land where they are held prisoner and direct their prayers toward the land you gave to their ancestors, your chosen city, and the temple I built for your honor,

Now, Lord God, may your promise to my father David be realized, for you have made me king over a great nation as numerous as the dust of the earth.

and prayed: “O Lord God of Israel, there is no god like you in heaven or on earth! You maintain covenantal loyalty to your servants who obey you with sincerity.

When I close up the sky so that it doesn’t rain, or command locusts to devour the land’s vegetation, or send a plague among my people,