He was king in Jerusalem over all Israel for forty years.

Four hundred and eighty years after the people of Israel left Egypt, during the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the second month, the month of Ziv, Solomon began work on the Temple.

It took Solomon twenty years to build the Temple and his palace.

Solomon's son Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen from all the territory of Israel as the place where he was to be worshiped. Rehoboam's mother was Naamah from Ammon.

He married them even though the LORD had commanded the Israelites not to intermarry with these people, because they would cause the Israelites to give their loyalty to other gods.

because then they would lead your children away from the LORD to worship other gods. If that happens, the LORD will be angry with you and destroy you at once.

The king is not to have many wives, because this would make him turn away from the LORD; and he is not to make himself rich with silver and gold.

I told them, "It was foreign women that made King Solomon sin. Here was a man who was greater than any of the kings of other nations. God loved him and made him king over all of Israel, and yet he fell into this sin.

Are we then to follow your example and disobey our God by marrying foreign women?"

He sinned against the LORD and was not true to him as his father David had been.

If you obey me completely, live by my laws, and win my approval by doing what I command, as my servant David did, I will always be with you. I will make you king of Israel and will make sure that your descendants rule after you, just as I have done for David.

"If you obey all my laws and commands, I will do for you what I promised your father David.

I will live among my people Israel in this Temple that you are building, and I will never abandon them."

May you, his people, always be faithful to the LORD our God, obeying all his laws and commands as you do today."

If you will serve me in honesty and integrity, as your father David did, and if you obey my laws and do everything I have commanded you,

He committed the same sins as his father and was not completely loyal to the LORD his God, as his great-grandfather David had been.

Even though Asa did not destroy all the pagan places of worship, he remained faithful to the LORD all his life.

"Remember, LORD, that I have served you faithfully and loyally and that I have always tried to do what you wanted me to." And he began to cry bitterly.

And to Solomon he said, "My son, I charge you to acknowledge your father's God and to serve him with an undivided heart and a willing mind. He knows all our thoughts and desires. If you go to him, he will accept you; but if you turn away from him, he will abandon you forever.

Give my son Solomon a wholehearted desire to obey everything that you command and to build the Temple for which I have made these preparations."

The LORD blessed Jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father's early life and did not worship Baal.

He did what was pleasing to the LORD, but did it reluctantly.

Throughout all Judah, King Hezekiah did what was right and what was pleasing to the LORD his God.

He was successful, because everything he did for the Temple or in observance of the Law, he did in a spirit of complete loyalty and devotion to his God.

He did what was pleasing to the LORD; he followed the example of his ancestor King David, strictly obeying all the laws of God.