Samuel said, “Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying Yahweh’s voice? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.
So Samuel went back with Saul; and Saul worshiped Yahweh.
Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so your mother will be childless among women!” Then Samuel cut Agag in pieces before Yahweh in Gilgal.
Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” Yahweh said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh.
Call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint to me him whom I name to you.”
He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh. Sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” He sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice.
Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by David his son to Saul.
David arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred men of the Philistines. Then David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full number to the king, that he might be the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michal his daughter as wife.
for he put his life in his hand, and struck the Philistine, and Yahweh worked a great victory for all Israel. You saw it, and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?”
If your father misses me at all, then say, ‘David earnestly asked leave of me that he might run to Bethlehem his city; for it is the yearly sacrifice there for all the family.’
He said, ‘Please let me go, for our family has a sacrifice in the city. My brother has commanded me to be there. Now, if I have found favor in your eyes, please let me go away and see my brothers.’ Therefore he has not come to the king’s table.”
So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the show bread that was taken from before Yahweh, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away.
When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech fled to David to Keilah, he came down with an ephod in his hand.
Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread, two bottles of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five seahs of parched grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.
Now therefore, please let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is so that Yahweh has stirred you up against me, let him accept an offering. But if it is the children of men, they are cursed before Yahweh; for they have driven me out today that I shouldn’t cling to Yahweh’s inheritance, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods!’
The woman had a fattened calf in the house. She hurried and killed it; and she took flour, and kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread of it.
Then Saul said to his armor bearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me!” But his armor bearer would not; for he was terrified. Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell on it.
When his armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he likewise fell on his sword, and died with him.
So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor bearer, and all his men, that same day together.
On the next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.
They put his armor in the house of the Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan.
When the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul,
all the valiant men arose, went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth Shan; and they came to Jabesh, and burned them there.
You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain on you, and no fields of offerings; For there the shield of the mighty was defiled and cast away, The shield of Saul was not anointed with oil.
They each caught his opponent by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow’s side; so they fell down together: therefore that place in Gibeon was called Helkath Hazzurim.
David sent messengers to Ishbosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Deliver me my wife Michal, whom I was given to marry for one hundred foreskins of the Philistines.”
When those who bore Yahweh’s ark had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened calf.
They brought in Yahweh’s ark, and set it in its place, in the middle of the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before Yahweh.
When David had finished offering the burnt offering and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of Yahweh of Armies.
King David also dedicated these to Yahweh, with the silver and gold that he dedicated of all the nations which he subdued;
Uriah said to David, “The ark, Israel, and Judah, are staying in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open field. Shall I then go into my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing!”
The woman of Tekoa said to the king, “My lord, O king, may the iniquity be on me, and on my father’s house; and may the king and his throne be guiltless.”
At the end of forty years, Absalom said to the king, “Please let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed to Yahweh, in Hebron.
Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David’s counselor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he was offering the sacrifices. The conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with Absalom.
Behold, Zadok also came, and all the Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God; and they set down God’s ark; and Abiathar went up, until all the people finished passing out of the city.
When David had come to the top, where God was worshiped, behold, Hushai the Archite came to meet him with his coat torn, and earth on his head.
Mephibosheth said to the king, “Yes, let him take all, because my lord the king has come in peace to his own house.”
Amasa lay wallowing in his blood in the middle of the highway. When the man saw that all the people stood still, he carried Amasa out of the highway into the field, and cast a garment over him, when he saw that everyone who came by him stood still.
and David said to the Gibeonites, “What should I do for you? And with what should I make atonement, that you may bless Yahweh’s inheritance?”
let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to Yahweh in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of Yahweh.” The king said, “I will give them.”
He delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before Yahweh, and all seven of them fell together. They were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, at the beginning of barley harvest.
Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water poured on them from the sky. She allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them by day, nor the animals of the field by night.
David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done.
and he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son. They also gathered the bones of those who were hanged.
The three mighty men broke through the army of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David; but he would not drink of it, but poured it out to Yahweh.
He said, “Be it far from me, Yahweh, that I should do this! Isn’t this the blood of the men who risked their lives to go?” Therefore he would not drink it. The three mighty men did these things.
and Uriah the Hittite: thirty-seven in all.
Gad came that day to David, and said to him, “Go up, build an altar to Yahweh on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”
Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy your threshing floor, to build an altar to Yahweh, that the plague may be stopped from afflicting the people.”
Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Behold, the cattle for the burnt offering, and the threshing instruments and the yokes of the oxen for the wood.
All this, O king, does Araunah give to the king.” Araunah said to the king, “May Yahweh your God accept you.”
The king said to Araunah, “No; but I will most certainly buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to Yahweh my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
David built an altar to Yahweh there, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So Yahweh was entreated for the land, and the plague was removed from Israel.
Adonijah killed sheep, cattle, and fatlings by the stone of Zoheleth, which is beside En Rogel; and he called all his brothers, the king’s sons, and all the men of Judah, the king’s servants;
Adonijah was afraid because of Solomon; and he arose, and went, and hung onto the horns of the altar.
To Abiathar the priest the king said, “Go to Anathoth, to your own fields; for you are worthy of death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you bore the Lord Yahweh’s ark before David my father, and because you were afflicted in all in which my father was afflicted.”
This news came to Joab; for Joab had followed Adonijah, although he didn’t follow Absalom. Joab fled to Yahweh’s Tent, and held onto the horns of the altar.
King Solomon was told, “Joab has fled to Yahweh’s Tent, and behold, he is by the altar.” Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go, fall on him.”
However the people sacrificed in the high places, because there was not yet a house built for Yahweh’s name.
Solomon loved Yahweh, walking in the statutes of David his father; except that he sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.
The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place. Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.
Solomon awoke; and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of Yahweh’s covenant, and offered up burnt offerings, offered peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.
Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand cors of wheat for food to his household, and twenty cors of pure oil. Solomon gave this to Hiram year by year.
He prepared an inner sanctuary in the middle of the house within, to set the ark of Yahweh’s covenant there.
Within the inner sanctuary was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in width, and twenty cubits in its height; and he overlaid it with pure gold; and he covered the altar with cedar.
So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold. He drew chains of gold across before the inner sanctuary, and he overlaid it with gold.
He overlaid the whole house with gold, until all the house was finished. He also overlaid the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary with gold.
The great court around had three courses of cut stone, and a course of cedar beams; like the inner court of Yahweh’s house and the porch of the house.
It was a hand width thick. Its brim was worked like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily. It held two thousand baths.
the ten bases; the ten basins on the bases;
the one sea; the twelve oxen under the sea;
Solomon made all the vessels that were in Yahweh’s house: the golden altar and the table that the show bread was on, of gold;
Thus all the work that king Solomon did in Yahweh’s house was finished. Solomon brought in the things which David his father had dedicated, the silver, the gold, and the vessels, and put them in the treasuries of Yahweh’s house.
All the men of Israel assembled themselves to king Solomon at the feast, in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.
All the elders of Israel came, and the priests picked up the ark.
They brought up Yahweh’s ark, the Tent of Meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the Tent. The priests and the Levites brought these up.
King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who were assembled to him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and cattle, that could not be counted or numbered for multitude.
The priests brought in the ark of Yahweh’s covenant to its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, to the most holy place, even under the cherubim’s wings.
The poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary; but they were not seen outside. They are there to this day.
The king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before Yahweh.
Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to Yahweh, twenty two thousand head of cattle, and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated Yahweh’s house.
The same day the king made the middle of the court holy that was before Yahweh’s house; for there he offered the burnt offering, and the meal offering, and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar that was before Yahweh was too little to receive the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the fat of the peace offerings.
This is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised, to build Yahweh’s house, his own house, Millo, Jerusalem’s wall, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.
Solomon 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.
For when David was in Edom, and Joab the captain of the army had gone up to bury the slain, and had struck every male in Edom
If this people goes up to offer sacrifices in Yahweh’s house at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah; and they will kill me, and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.”
Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast that is in Judah, and he went up to the altar. He did so in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made, and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made.
He went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar, to burn incense.
He cried against the altar by Yahweh’s word, and said, “Altar! Altar! Yahweh says: ‘Behold, a son will be born to David’s house, Josiah by name. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and they will burn men’s bones on you.’”
He brought into Yahweh’s house the things that his father had dedicated, and the things that he himself had dedicated: silver, gold, and utensils.
Let them therefore give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire under; and I will dress the other bull, and lay it on the wood, and put no fire under it.
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one bull for yourselves, and dress it first; for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it.”
They cried aloud, and cut themselves in their way with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them.
With the stones he built an altar in Yahweh’s name. He made a trench around the altar, large enough to contain two seahs of seed.
He put the wood in order, and cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. He said, “Fill four jars with water, and pour it on the burnt offering, and on the wood.”
The water ran around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.
At the time of the evening offering, Elijah the prophet came near, and said, “Yahweh, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word.
Then Yahweh’s fire fell, and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
He returned from following him, and took the yoke of oxen, and killed them, and boiled their meat with the instruments of the oxen, and gave to the people, and they ate. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and served him.
The battle increased that day. The king was propped up in his chariot facing the Syrians, and died at evening. The blood ran out of the wound into the bottom of the chariot.












