Other things that Solomon did
10 Solomon was building the Lord's temple and the king's palace for 20 years. 11 After this, he gave 20 towns in Galilee to Hiram, the king of Tyre. Solomon did this because Hiram had given him all that he needed for the work. Hiram had given him cedar wood, pine wood and gold. 12 So Hiram left Tyre and he went to Galilee, to see the towns that Solomon had given to him. But Hiram was not happy with them. 13 He said to Solomon, ‘My friend, you have given me some useless towns!’ Hiram called that region ‘Kabul Land’. It still has that name today. 14 Hiram had sent to King Solomon about 4,000 kilograms of gold.
9:13‘Kabul’ sounds like a Hebrew word that means ‘useless’. The towns were near Tyre.
15 Solomon made people work on the buildings for him. This is how he used them to build the Lord's temple, the king's palace, the Millo and the wall around Jerusalem. They also did work on the towns called Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. 16 Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had attacked Gezer and he had taken it. He had destroyed it with fire. He killed the Canaanites who lived there. Then he gave it as a gift to his daughter, when she married Solomon. 17 So Solomon built Gezer again. He also built Lower Beth-Horon, 18 Baalath and Tadmor, which were towns in the wilderness of Judah. 19 Solomon also made strong the cities where he stored things and the cities where he kept his chariots and horses. He built everything that he wanted to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and everywhere in his kingdom.
9:16The Canaanites were the people who lived in Israel's land before the Israelites came to live there.
20 Solomon only made people who were not Israelites do the hard work for him. They were Canaanite people who still lived in the land after the Israelites took it for themselves. They were Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 21 The Israelites had not been able to remove all of these people, so their descendants remained in the land. So Solomon made them do hard work as his slaves. They are still slaves of the Israelites today. 22 But Solomon did not make any of the Israelites do the hard work. Instead, they served him as his soldiers, government officers and army officers. Some of the soldiers drove chariots and some were leaders of the chariot drivers. 23 There were also officers who had authority over the slaves who did the work. There were 550 officers who led the work.
24 Solomon had built a palace for his wife, Pharaoh's daughter. When the palace was ready, she came up from the City of David. After that, Solomon built the Millo.
25 Three times every year Solomon offered burnt offerings and friendship offerings as sacrifices to the Lord. He did this on the altar that he had built for the Lord. With these offerings, he also burned incense to worship the Lord. So the temple became the place to worship the Lord.
26 King Solomon also built ships at Ezion-Geber. This place is near Elath in Edom, on the shore of the Red Sea. 27 Hiram had sailors who knew how to sail ships on the sea. He sent some of these men to work with Solomon's sailors. 28 They sailed to Ophir and they brought back about 14 tons of gold. They gave it to King Solomon.
