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Giovedi, 28 marzo 2024 - San Castore di Tarso ( Letture di oggi)

1 Kings 9


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1When Solomon had finished building the Temple of Yahweh, the royal palace and everything else whichSolomon had wanted to do,2Yahweh appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon.3Yahweh said to him, 'I have heard your prayer and the entreaty which you have before me. I consecratethis temple which you have built: I place my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart wil be there always.4For your part, if you walk before me in innocence of heart and in honesty, like your father David, if youdo everything that I command and keep my laws and my ordinances,5I shal make your royal throne secure over Israel for ever, as I promised your father David when I said,"You wil never lack for a man on the throne of Israel."6But if you turn away from me, either you or your descendants, and instead of keeping mycommandments and laws which I have laid down for you, you go and serve other gods and worship them,7then I shal banish Israel from the country which I have given them, and shall disown this Temple which Ihave consecrated for my name, and Israel will be a proverb and a byword among al peoples.8As for this once-exalted Temple, everyone who passes by wil be appal ed, and they wil whistle and say,"Why has Yahweh treated this country and this Temple like this?"9And the answer wil be, "Because they deserted Yahweh their God who brought their ancestors out ofEgypt, and they adopted other gods and worshipped and served them; that is why Yahweh has brought al thesedisasters on them." '10At the end of the twenty years that it took Solomon to erect the two buildings, the Temple of Yahwehand the royal palace11(Hiram king of Tyre had provided Solomon with al the cedar wood, juniper wood and gold that hewanted), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in the territory of Galilee.12But when Hiram came from Tyre to view the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleasedwith them.13He said, 'What kind of towns are these you have given me, brother?' And to this day they are known as'cabul-land'.14Hiram sent the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.15This is an account of the forced labour levied by King Solomon for building the Temple of Yahweh, hisown palace, the Mil o and the fortifications of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer16(Pharaoh king of Egypt mounted an expedition, captured Gezer, burnt it down and massacred theCanaanites living there; he then gave the town as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife,17and Solomon rebuilt Gezer), Lower Beth-Horon,18Baalath, Tamar in the desert, inside the country,19al Solomon's storage towns owned by Solomon, al the towns for his chariots and horses, andwhatever Solomon was pleased to build in Jerusalem, in the Lebanon and in al the countries under his rule.20Al those who survived of the Amorite, Hittite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite peoples, who were notIsraelites-21their descendants still remaining in the country on whom the Israelites had not been able to enforce thecurse of destruction -- these Solomon levied as forced labourers, as is stil the case today.22Solomon did not, however, impose forced labour on the Israelites; for they were soldiers, his officials,his administrators, his officers and his chariot and cavalry commanders.23There were five hundred and fifty officials in charge of the foremen over Solomon's work, whosupervised the people employed on the work.24After Pharaoh's daughter had moved from the City of David up to the palace which he had built for her,he then built the Mil o.25Three times a year Solomon presented burnt offerings and communion sacrifices on the altar which hehad built for Yahweh and set his burnt offerings smoking before Yahweh. Thus he completed the Temple.26King Solomon equipped a fleet at Ezion-Geber, which is near Elath on the shores of the Red Sea, inEdom.27For this fleet Hiram sent men of his, experienced sailors, to serve with those in Solomon's service.28They went to Ophir and took on four hundred and twenty talents of gold, which they brought back toSolomon.