King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba everything she requested, more than what she had brought him. Then she left and returned to her homeland with her attendants.

He asked them, “How do you advise me to respond to these people who said to me, ‘Lessen the demands your father placed on us’?”

The young advisers with whom Rehoboam had grown up said to him, “Say this to these people who have said to you, ‘Your father made us work hard, but now lighten our burden’ – say this to them: ‘I am a lot harsher than my father!

When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he was encouraged. He removed the detestable idols from the entire land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities he had seized in the Ephraimite hill country. He repaired the altar of the Lord in front of the porch of the Lord’s temple.

He was buried in the tomb he had carved out in the City of David. They laid him to rest on a bier covered with spices and assorted mixtures of ointments. They made a huge bonfire to honor him.

But the Lord was unwilling to destroy David’s dynasty because of the promise he had made to give David a perpetual dynasty.

Who among all the gods of these nations whom my predecessors annihilated was able to rescue his people from my power?

I will not make Israel again leave the land I gave to their ancestors, provided that they carefully obey all I commanded them, the whole law, the rules and regulations given to Moses.”

But the bronze altar made by Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur, was in front of the Lord’s tabernacle. Solomon and the entire assembly prayed to him there.)

Solomon went up to the bronze altar before the Lord which was at the meeting tent, and he offered up a thousand burnt sacrifices.

The king made silver and gold as plentiful in Jerusalem as stones; cedar was as plentiful as sycamore fig trees are in the lowlands.

The porch in front of the main hall was 30 feet long, corresponding to the width of the temple, and its height was 30 feet. He plated the inside with pure gold.

In front of the temple he made two pillars which had a combined length of 52½ feet, with each having a plated capital seven and one-half feet high.

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

The priests and Levites carried the ark, the tent where God appeared to his people, and all the holy items in the tent.

Now King Solomon and all the Israelites who had assembled with him went on ahead of the ark and sacrificed more sheep and cattle than could be counted or numbered.

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.

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.

then listen from heaven, forgive the sin of your people Israel, and bring them back to the land you gave to them and their ancestors.