The Lord told my father David, ‘It is right for you to have a strong desire to build a temple to honor me.

The main hall in front of the inner sanctuary was 60 feet long.

May the Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors. May he not abandon us or leave us.

The high places were not eliminated, yet Asa was wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord throughout his lifetime.

After a while, the stream dried up because there had been no rain in the land.

As the Lord is with my master the king, so may he be with Solomon, and may he make him an even greater king than my master King David!”

I grant your request, and give you a wise and discerning mind superior to that of anyone who has preceded or will succeed you.

Furthermore, I am giving you what you did not request – riches and honor so that you will be the greatest king of your generation.

I got up in the morning to nurse my son, and there he was, dead! But when I examined him carefully in the morning, I realized it was not my baby.”

Solomon answered all her questions; there was no question too complex for the king.

the food in his banquet hall, his servants and attendants, their robes, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings which he presented in the Lord’s temple, she was amazed.

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

There were also male cultic prostitutes in the land. They committed the same horrible sins as the nations that the Lord had driven out from before the Israelites.

He followed all the sinful practices of his father before him. He was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his ancestor David had been.

At that time the people of Israel were divided in their loyalties. Half the people supported Tibni son of Ginath and wanted to make him king; the other half supported Omri.

So Ahab summoned Obadiah, who supervised the palace. (Now Obadiah was a very loyal follower of the Lord.

Then Elijah took twelve stones, corresponding to the number of tribes that descended from Jacob, to whom the Lord had said, “Israel will be your new name.”

After this the following episode took place. Naboth the Jezreelite owned a vineyard in Jezreel adjacent to the palace of King Ahab of Samaria.

(There had never been anyone like Ahab, who was firmly committed to doing evil in the sight of the Lord, urged on by his wife Jezebel.

While the battle raged throughout the day, the king stood propped up in his chariot opposite the Syrians. He died in the evening; the blood from the wound ran down into the bottom of the chariot.