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!”

and said this: ‘The Lord God of Israel is worthy of praise because today he has placed a successor on my throne and allowed me to see it.’”

Solomon dismissed Abiathar from his position as priest of the Lord, fulfilling the decree of judgment the Lord made in Shiloh against the family of Eli.

May Joab and his descendants be perpetually guilty of their shed blood, but may the Lord give perpetual peace to David, his descendants, his family, and his dynasty.”

Now the people were offering sacrifices at the high places, because in those days a temple had not yet been built to honor the Lord.

Solomon demonstrated his loyalty to the Lord by following the practices of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

One night in Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream. God said, “Tell me what I should give you.”

Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in my father David’s place, even though I am only a young man and am inexperienced.

Around the great courtyard were three rows of chiseled stones and one row of cedar beams, like the inner courtyard of the Lord’s temple and the hall of the palace.

Solomon also made all these items for the Lord’s temple: the gold altar, the gold table on which was kept the Bread of the Presence,

The priests and Levites carried the ark of the Lord, the tent of meeting, and all the holy items in the tent.

The priests brought the ark of the Lord’s covenant to its assigned place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, in the most holy place, under the wings of the cherubs.

He said, “The Lord God of Israel is worthy of praise because he has fulfilled what he promised my father David.

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

and set up in it a place for the ark containing the covenant the Lord made with our ancestors when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.”

But respond favorably to your servant’s prayer and his request for help, O Lord my God. Answer the desperate prayer your servant is presenting to you today.

After Solomon finished building the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all the other construction projects he had planned,

After twenty years, during which Solomon built the Lord’s temple and the royal palace,

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.

and had warned him about this very thing, so that he would not follow other gods. But he did not obey the Lord’s command.