And they said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself a pillar which is in the King’s Valley, for he had said, “I have no son to preserve my name.” So he named the pillar after his own name, and it is called Absalom’s Monument to this day.
“Let there be a covenant between you and me, as between my father and your father. Behold, I have sent you a gift of silver and gold; go, break your covenant with Baasha king of Israel so that he will withdraw from me.”
He also built towers in the wilderness and hewed many cisterns, for he had much livestock, both in the Shephelah and in the plain. He also had plowmen and vinedressers in the hill country and the fertile fields, for he loved the soil.
Then Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter up from the city of David to the house which he had built for her, for he said, “My wife shall not live in the house of David king of Israel, because the places are holy where the ark of Yahweh has entered.”
Their inner thought is that their houses are forever And their dwelling places from generation to generation; They have called their lands after their own names.
“Let us rise early and go to the vineyards; Let us see whether the vine has flourished And its blossoms have opened, And whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love.
The king answered and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal house by the strength of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’