Today is the 12th day of June. Welcome to the daily audio Bible. I am Brian and it is wonderful to be here around the global campfire with you today.

As we gather from all the farthest points of the earth gather together in this place, this little place that we have each and every day to allow God's Word to speak into our lives,

and as a joy and an honor to be around the global campfire with you. And do what we do, which is to take the next step forward.

We were at the inauguration or the dedication of the temple of the most high God in Jerusalem yesterday, as we read in First Kings.

We were with Solomon, dedicating the temple with all of the people of Israel, and we're continuing forward on that journey today.

So let's dive in. First Kings, chapters 9 and 10. And we are reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

When Solomon finished building the temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and all that Solomon desired to do, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time just as he had appeared to him at Gibi'in.

The Lord said to him,

I have heard your prayer and petition you have made before me. I have consecrated this temple you have built to put my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

As for you, if you walk before me as your father David walked, with a heart of integrity, and in what is right, doing everything I have commanded you, and if you keep my statutes and ordinances, I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised your father David.

You will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel. If you or your sons turn away from following me and do not keep my commands, my statutes that I have set before you, and if you go and serve other gods and bow in worship to them, I will cut off Israel from the land I gave them, and I will reject the temple I have sanctified for my name.

Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all the peoples. Though this temple is now exalted, everyone who passes by will be appalled and will scoff. They will say, why did the Lord do this to this land and this temple?

Then they will say, because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt. They held onto other gods and bowed in worship to them and served them, because of this the Lord brought all this ruin on them.

At the end of 20 years, during which Solomon had built the two houses, the Lord's temple and the royal palace, King Hiram of Tyre having supplied him with cedar and cypress logs and gold for his every wish, King Solomon gave Hiram 20 towns in the land of Galilee.

So Hiram went out from Tyre to look over the towns that Solomon had given him, but he was not pleased with them. So he said, what are these towns you have given me my brother?

So we called them the land of Kabul, as they are still called today. Now Hiram had sent the King 9,000 pounds of gold.

This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon had imposed to build the Lord's temple, his own palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem and Hotsor, Mangido and Gaezer.

Pharaoh, King of Egypt, had attacked and captured Gaezer. He then burned it, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city and gave it as a dowry to his daughter Solomon's wife.

Then Solomon rebuilt Gaezer, lower-beth Haran, Beyalat, Tamar in the wilderness of Judah, all the storage cities that belonged to Solomon, the chariot cities, the cavalry cities, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, Lebanon or anywhere else in the land of his dominion.

As for all the people who remained of the Amorites, Heetites, Parasites, Hevites and Jebiusites, who were not Israelites,

their descendants who remained in the land after them, those whom the Israelites were unable to destroy completely, Solomon imposed forced labor on them.

It is still this way today, but Solomon did not consign the Israelites to slavery. They were soldiers, his servants, his commanders, his captains and commanders of his chariots and his cavalry.

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