1When Solomon had finished the building of Yahweh’s house, the king’s house, and all Solomon’s desire which he was pleased to do, 2Yahweh appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3Yahweh said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before me. I have made this house holy, which you have built, to put my name there forever; and my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually. 4As for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep my statutes and my ordinances, 5then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised to David your father, saying, ‘There shall not fail from you a man on the throne of Israel.’ 6But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have made holy for my name, out of my sight; and Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8Though this house is so high, yet everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss; and they will say, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land and to this house?’ 9and they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned Yahweh their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, and worshiped them, and served them. Therefore Yahweh has brought all this evil on them.’”
10At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, Yahweh’s house and the king’s house 11(now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar trees and cypress trees, and with gold, according to all his desire), King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. 12Hiram came out of Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they didn’t please him. 13He said, “What cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” He called them the land of Cabul to this day. 14Hiram sent to the king one hundred twenty talents of gold.
15This is the reason of the forced labor which King Solomon conscripted: to build Yahweh’s house, his own house, Millo, Jerusalem’s wall, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, taken Gezer, burned it with fire, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and given it for a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife. 17Solomon built in the land Gezer, Beth Horon the lower, 18Baalath, Tamar in the wilderness, 19all the storage cities that Solomon had, the cities for his chariots, the cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon desired to build for his pleasure in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. 20As for all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the children of Israel— 21their children who were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel were not able utterly to destroy—of them Solomon raised a levy of bondservants to this day. 22But of the children of Israel Solomon made no bondservants; but they were the men of war, his servants, his princes, his captains, and rulers of his chariots and of his horsemen. 23These were the five hundred fifty chief officers who were over Solomon’s work, who ruled over the people who labored in the work.
24But Pharaoh’s daughter came up out of David’s city to her house which Solomon had built for her. Then he built Millo.
25Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he built to Yahweh three times per year, burning incense with them on the altar that was before Yahweh. So he finished the house.
26King Solomon made a fleet of ships in Ezion Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. 27Hiram sent in the fleet his servants, sailors who had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. 28They came to Ophir, and fetched from there gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon.
For many years after the Enlightenment, it was common for skeptics of the history of the Bible cast doubt on many historical persons, events, and groups of people, viewing them as little more than the characters in a book like Lord of the Rings. Was there really an Abraham? Did Sodom actually exist?
One such doubt relates to the existence of the Hittites, mentioned nearly fifty times in the Bible. The Hittites are portrayed as a great people, similar to the Babylonians, with their domain extending over large portions of the land of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the Middle East. Scholars who doubt biblical history declared that there was no evidence for the Hittite nation, for if such were true, they would know about it.
In the last few years of the nineteenth century, archaeologists came upon the city of Hattusa in north-central Turkey and found thousands of cuneiform tablets and a civilization that extended over much of Turkey and into the Middle East. Finally, archaeology caught up with the Bible. This kingdom held sway from the middle of the 17th century through the 12th century, with its greatest influence during the 14th century. It finally began to succumb due to the rise of the Assyrian kingdom, though portions of the subsequent sub-kingdoms held influence even in the time of the New Testament.
I have found my time at Hattusa to be one of the most interesting of my various tours in Turkey. It is high in elevation and one ascends to the top of the site, the air is crisp and the view is spectacular. I can understand why the early Hittites wanted to establish Hattusa as their capital city. The city below hosts ruins of temples and houses, and the palace was at the top. Near the city is the site religious site called Yazilikaya, where one founds the famous twelve gods of the Hittites carved into the walls of the shrine.
Through our study of the Hittites we have discovered how even the form of the covenants written by Moses had an impact on the structure and content of his writing of Exodus through Deuteronomy, and also show the integrity of these books in contrast to modern liberal biblical criticism.