ABSTRACT
And then the elders of ISRAEL made answer and said unto him, "May thy good pleasure be done, and the good pleasure of the Lord God! As for us, none of us will transgress thy word, and we will not inform any other people that ZION hath been taken away from us." And thev established this covenant in the House of
God-th~elders of ISRAEL with their King SOLOMON unto this day. And SOLOMON lived [thus] for eleven years after the taking away of ZION from him, and then his heart turned aside from the love of God, and he forgot his wisdom, through his excessive love of women. And he loved very greatly the daughter of PHARAOH, the king of EGYPT, whose name was MA~SHARA, and he brought her into the house which he had made; and there were figures of the sun, moon, and stars in the roof thereof, and it was illumined by night as brightly as by day. Its beams were made of brass, and its roof of silver, and its
panels (?) of lead, and its walls of stone, red with black, and brown with white [and] green; and its floor was of blocks of sapphire stone and sardius. And he used to go and dwell therein through his love for his house and his wife MA~SHARA, the daughter of PHARAOH the king of EGYPT.
