Lexicon :: Strong's H1 - 'āḇ

And Solomon said to God, “You have shown great and faithful love to my father David, and you have made me king in his place.

“LORD God, let your promise to my father David now come true. For you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth.

Therefore, send me an artisan who is skilled in engraving to work with gold, silver, bronze, and iron, and with purple, crimson, and blue yarn. He will work with the artisans who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, appointed by my father David.

I have now sent Huram-abi,[fn] a skillful man who has understanding.

He is the son of a woman from the daughters of Dan. His father is a man of Tyre. He knows how to work with gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, with purple, blue, crimson yarn, and fine linen. He knows how to do all kinds of engraving and to execute any design that may be given him. I have sent him to be with your artisans and the artisans of my lord, your father David.

Solomon took a census of all the resident alien men in the land of Israel, after the census that his father David had conducted, and the total was 153,600.

At that time Solomon assembled at Jerusalem the elders of Israel ​— ​all the tribal heads, the ancestral chiefs of the Israelites ​— ​in order to bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD up from the city of David, that is, Zion.

My father David had his heart set

on building a temple for the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.

However, the LORD said to my father David,

“Since it was your desire to build a temple for my name,

you have done well to have this desire.

So the LORD has fulfilled what he promised.

I have taken the place of my father David

and I sit on the throne of Israel, as the LORD promised.

I have built the temple for the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.

You have kept what you promised

to your servant, my father David.

You spoke directly to him,

and you fulfilled your promise by your power,

as it is today.

Therefore, LORD God of Israel,

keep what you promised

to your servant, my father David:

“You will never fail to have a man

to sit before me on the throne of Israel,

if only your sons take care to walk in my Law

as you have walked before me.”

may you hear in heaven

and forgive the sin of your people Israel.

May you restore them to the land

you gave them and their ancestors.

so that they may fear you

and walk in your ways

all the days they live on the land

you gave our ancestors.

and when they return to you with all their mind and all their heart

in the land of their captivity where they were taken captive,

and when they pray in the direction of their land

that you gave their ancestors,

and the city you have chosen,

and toward the temple I have built for your name,

I will establish your royal throne, as I promised your father David: You will never fail to have a man ruling in Israel.

Then they will say, “Because they abandoned the LORD God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They clung to other gods and bowed in worship to them and served them. Because of this, he brought all this ruin on them.”

Then King Rehoboam consulted with the elders who had attended his father Solomon when he was alive, asking, “How do you advise me to respond to this people? ”

He asked them, “What message do you advise we send back to this people who said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’? ”

Then the young men who had grown up with him told him, “This is what you should say to the people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you, make it lighter on us! ’ This is what you should say to them: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist!

“Now therefore, my father burdened you with a heavy yoke, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I, with barbed whips.’ ”[fn]

and spoke to them according to the young men’s advice, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy,[fn] but I will add to it; my father disciplined you with whips, but I, with barbed whips.”

The Israelites were subdued at that time. The Judahites succeeded because they depended on the LORD, the God of their ancestors.

He told the people of Judah to seek the LORD God of their ancestors and to carry out the instruction and the commands.

He brought his father’s consecrated gifts and his own consecrated gifts into God’s temple: silver, gold, and utensils.

Asa rested with his ancestors; he died in the forty-first year of his reign.

Now the LORD was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the former ways of his ancestor David.[fn] He did not seek the Baals

but sought the God of his father and walked by his commands, not according to the practices of Israel.

These are their numbers according to their ancestral families.[fn] For Judah, the commanders of thousands:

Adnah the commander and three hundred thousand valiant warriors with him;

Jehoshaphat also appointed in Jerusalem some of the Levites and priests and some of the Israelite family heads for deciding the LORD’s will and for settling disputes of the residents of[fn] Jerusalem.

He walked in the ways of Asa his father; he did not turn away from it but did what was right in the LORD’s sight.