8. This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff and say, “Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?”
9. People will answer, “Because they have forsaken the Lord their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them – that is why the Lord brought all this disaster on them.” ’
10. At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built these two buildings – the temple of the Lord and the royal palace –
11. King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and juniper and gold he wanted.
12. But when Hiram went from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them.
13. ‘What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?’ he asked. And he called them the Land of Kabul, a name they have to this day.
14. Now Hiram had sent to the king 120 talents of gold.
15. Here is the account of the forced labour King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord’s temple, his own palace, the terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.
16. (Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He had set it on fire. He killed its Canaanite inhabitants and then gave it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.
17. And Solomon rebuilt Gezer.) He built up Lower Beth Horon,
18. Baalath, and Tadmor in the desert, within his land,
19. as well as all his store cities and the towns for his chariots and for his horses – whatever he desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and throughout all the territory he ruled.
20. There were still people left from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (these peoples were not Israelites).
21. Solomon conscripted the descendants of all these peoples remaining in the land – whom the Israelites could not exterminate – to serve as slave labour, as it is to this day.
22. But Solomon did not make slaves of any of the Israelites; they were his fighting men, his government officials, his officers, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and charioteers.