1 Kings 4

1King Solomon was king over all Israel.

2These were his high officials: Azariah son of Zadok was the priest;

3Elihoreph and Ahijah, the sons of Shisha, were secretaries; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was the recorder;

4Benaiah son of Jehoiada was over the army; Zadok and Abiathar were priests;

5Azariah son of Nathan was over the district governors; Zabud son of Nathan was a priest and the king’s friend;

6Ahishar was over the palace; and Adoniram son of Abda was over the forced labor.

7Solomon had twelve district governors over all Israel, who provided food for the king and his household. Each one had to provide food for one month of the year.

8These were their names: Ben-hur, in the hill country of Ephraim;

9Ben-deker, in Makaz, Shaalbim, Beth-shemesh, and Elon-beth-hanan;

10Ben-hesed, in Arubboth; Socoh and all the land of Hepher were his;

11Ben-abinadab, in all of Naphath-dor; he had Taphath, Solomon’s daughter, as his wife;

12Baana son of Ahilud, in Taanach and Megiddo, and all Beth-shean, which is beside Zarethan below Jezreel, from Beth-shean to Abel-meholah, as far as the other side of Jokmeam;

13Ben-geber, in Ramoth-gilead; he had the villages of Jair son of Manasseh, which are in Gilead, and he had the region of Argob, which is in Bashan: sixty large cities with walls and bronze bars;

14Ahinadab son of Iddo, in Mahanaim;

15Ahimaaz, in Naphtali; he too had married a daughter of Solomon, Basemath;

16Baana son of Hushai, in Asher and Bealoth;

17Jehoshaphat son of Paruah, in Issachar;

18Shimei son of Ela, in Benjamin;

19Geber son of Uri, in the land of Gilead, the land of Sihon king of the Amorites and of Og king of Bashan. There was also one governor who was in the land.

20The people of Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy.

21Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines and as far as the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

22Solomon’s provisions for one day were thirty cors of fine flour and sixty cors of meal,

23ten fattened oxen, twenty pasture-fed oxen, and a hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened fowl.

24For he had dominion over the whole region west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings west of the Euphrates, and he had peace on every side all around him.

25Judah and Israel lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.

26Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.

27Those district governors, each in his month, provided food for King Solomon and for all who came to King Solomon’s table. They let nothing be lacking.

28They also brought barley and straw for the horses and the chariot horses to the place where it was needed, each according to his assignment.

29God gave Solomon wisdom and very great understanding, and a breadth of mind as vast as the sand on the seashore.

30Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.

31He was wiser than anyone else, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol. His fame spread to all the surrounding nations.

32He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005.

33He spoke about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He also spoke about animals, birds, creeping things, and fish.

34People came from all the nations to hear Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.