David answered, "Call Bathsheba to me." So she came in and stood before him. Then David made this solemn promise; "As surely as Jehovah lives, who has delivered me from all trouble, as I have solemnly promised to you by Jehovah, the God of Israel, saying, 'Solomon your son shall rule after me'; so I will certainly do to-day." Then Bathsheba bowed her face to the earth and said, "May my lord live forever."
Then David said, "Call to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada." When they came before him, he said to them, "Take with you the servants of your lord. Let Solomon my son ride upon my own mule, bring him down to Gihon, and there let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet make him ruler over Israel and blow the trumpet and say, 'May Solomon the ruler live!' Then you shall go up after him, and he shall go in and sit upon my throne, for he shall rule after me; and I have appointed him to be chief over Israel and Judah." Benaiah answered David, "So may it be! May Jehovah confirm the words of my lord. As Jehovah has been with my lord, even so may he be with Solomon, and may he make his throne greater than the throne of my lord David!"
Then Zadok, Nathan, and Benaiah together with the Philistine body-guards, went down and put Solomon on David's mule and brought him to Gihon. Zadok the priest took the horn of oil out of the tent and poured oil on Solomon's head, and they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, "May Solomon live!" Then all the people followed him and the people played on flutes and rejoiced so loudly that the earth seemed to be shaken by the sound that they made.
Adonijah and all the guests who were with him heard it just as they had finished eating. And they were terrified and each rose up and went away. But Adonijah in his fear of Solomon went and caught hold of the horns of the altar. When it was reported to Solomon, "See, Adonijah fears Solomon the ruler, for he has caught hold of the horns of the altar and says, 'Let Solomon solemnly promise me first that he will not kill his servant with the sword,'" Solomon said, "If he shall show himself a worthy man, not one of his hairs shall be touched, but if he is found guilty of disloyalty, he shall die." So Solomon had him brought from the altar. And he came and bowed before Solomon the ruler. And Solomon said to him, "Go to your home."
Then David died and was buried in the City of David, after having ruled over Israel forty years.
A Young Man's Wise Choice
Solomon went to Gibeon to offer a sacrifice there, for that was the great high place. He offered upon that altar a thousand animals as a burnt-offering.
In Gibeon Jehovah appeared to Solomon in a dream by night and said, "Ask what I shall give you." Solomon said, "Thou hast showed to thy servant David my father great kindness. Now, O Jehovah my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler in the place of David my father, although I am but a child who does not know how to go out or come in. Give thy servant, therefore, an understanding mind to rule thy people, that I may see clearly what is good and what is evil; for who is able to rule this thy great people?"
Jehovah was pleased that Solomon had asked this; and God said to him, "Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life nor riches nor the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to see clearly what is just, I have now granted what you ask; I have given you a wise and understanding mind. I have also given you that which you have not asked, both riches and honor." When Solomon awoke, he found that it was a dream; and he returned to Jerusalem.
Once two women came to Solomon and stood before him. The one woman said, "Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house. While with her in the house I had a child. Three days later this woman also had a child, and we were alone by ourselves in the house. While we two were alone this woman's child died in the night, because she lay upon it.
"Then she rose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid it on her breast and laid her dead child on mine. When I rose at dawn to nurse my child, there it was dead; but when I looked at it closely in the morning, I found that it was not my son." Then the other woman said, "No; the living is my son, and the dead child is your son." So they quarrelled before Solomon.
Then Solomon said, "One says, 'This one who is alive is my son, and your son is dead.' But the other says, 'No; your son is dead, and my son is the one that is alive.' Bring me a sword." So they brought him a sword. Then he said, "Divide the living child in two and give half to the one and half to the other." At that the woman to whom the living child belonged spoke to Solomon—for she loved her son with all her heart—and said, "Oh, my lord, give her the living child and on no account put it to death." But the other said, "It shall be neither mine nor yours! Divide it!" Then Solomon said, "Give the first woman the living child, and on no account put it to death; she is its mother."
When all Israel heard of the decision which Solomon had given, they had great respect for him, for they saw that he had divine wisdom to decide questions justly.
Building a Great Temple
In the fourth year of Solomon's rule over Israel he built the temple of Jehovah. The temple was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high. The porch before the large room of the temple was thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep. Solomon made windows for the temple with casings, broad on the inside and narrow on the outside.
The temple was built with stone which had been made ready at the quarry; neither hammer nor chisel nor any iron tool was heard while the temple was building. Against the wall of the temple on the outside Solomon built wings, both around the larger room and the inner room, and made side-chambers around the temple.
The entrance to the lower side-chambers was on the south side of the temple. Winding stairs led to the second floor, and from the second to the third. Solomon built the wings against the sides of the temple, each seven and a half feet high; and they were joined to the temple with timbers of cedar.
He covered the walls of the temple on the inside with boards of cedar from the floor of the temple to the rafters: and he covered the floor of the temple with boards of cypress.
He also made a room thirty feet square in the back part of the temple with boards of cedar reaching from the floor to the rafters. He built it as an inner room, even as the most holy place. The temple, that is the large room in front of the inner room, was sixty feet long. And there was cedar inside the temple with carving in the form of gourds and open flowers. All was cedar, no stone was seen. Solomon prepared the inner room as a place for the ark.
In the inner room Solomon made two winged bulls of olive wood. The height of each was fifteen feet. Each of their wings measured seven and a half feet across, fifteen feet from the end of one wing to the end of the other. He set these up in the inner room of the temple; and their wings were stretched out so that the wing of the one touched the one wall, while the wing of the other touched the other wall, and their wings touched each other in the middle of the temple; and he covered them with gold.
Then Solomon gathered in Jerusalem the leaders of Israel to bring up the ark of Jehovah out of Zion, the City of David, at the time of the autumn festival in September. When all the leaders of Israel had come, the priests took up the ark and the tent of meeting and all the sacred vessels that were in the tent. So the priests brought in the ark of Jehovah to its place in the inner room of the temple under the wings of the winged bulls. There was nothing in the ark except the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb. And when the priests came out from the inner room, the cloud filled the temple of Jehovah, so that the priests could not stand and perform their service on account of the cloud, for the glory of Jehovah filled his temple.