1And the Queen of Sheba heard the rumor of Solomon for the name of the LORD, and she came to try him with riddles. 2And she came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue—camels bearing a very great abundance of spices and gold and precious stones, and she came to Solomon and spoke to him all that was in her heart. 3And Solomon told her all her questions. There was no question hidden from the king that he did not tell her. 4And the Queen of Sheba saw all Solomon’s wisdom and the house that he had built, 5and the food on his table and the seat of his servants and the standing of his attendants and their garments and his cupbearers and the burnt offering he would offer up in the house of the LORD—and she was breathless. 6And she said to the king: “The word that I heard in my land about your doings and about your wisdom is true. 7And I did not believe these words until I came and my own eyes saw, and, look, the half of it was not told me. You exceed in wisdom and bounty beyond the rumor that I heard. 8Happy are your men, happy your servants, those who stand in your presence perpetually, listening to your wisdom. 9May the LORD your God be blessed, Who has desired you to set you on the throne of Israel through the LORD’s love of Israel forever, and has made you king to do judgment and justice.” 10And she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold and a very great abundance of spices and precious stones—never again did such an abundance of spice come as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. 11And Hiram’s fleet as well that bore gold from Ophir brought from Ophir a great abundance of sandalwood and precious stones. 12And the king made from the sandalwood beams for the house of the LORD and the house of the king and lutes and lyres for the singers—the like of the sandalwood has not come nor been seen to this day. 13And King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all she desired, for which she had asked, besides what Solomon had given her in royal bounty. And she turned and went off to her land, she and her servants.
14And the weight of gold that came to Solomon in a single year was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, 15besides what he had from the merchants and the traffic of the traders and all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the land. 16And King Solomon made two hundred shields of hammered gold, six hundred measures of gold he put on each shield, 17and three hundred bucklers of hammered gold, three hundred measures of gold on each buckler. And the king put them in the Lebanon Forest House. 18And the king made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with choicest gold. 19Six steps the throne had, and a round top behind it the throne had, and arms on each side at the seat and two lions standing by the arms. 20And twelve lions stood there on the six steps on each side. Its like was not made in all the kingdoms. 21And all King Solomon’s drinking vessels were gold, and all the vessels of the Lebanon Forest House pure gold. There was no silver—in Solomon’s days it was counted as naught. 22For the king had a Tarshish fleet in the sea together with Hiram’s fleet bearing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and parrots. 23And King Solomon was greater than all the kings of the earth in wealth and in wisdom. 24And the whole earth sought Solomon’s presence to hear his wisdom that God had put in his heart. 25And they would bring each his tribute, vessels of silver and vessels of gold and cloaks and arms and spices, horses and mules, the set amount year by year. 26And Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen, and he had a thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, and he led them to the chariot towns, and with the king in Jerusalem. 27And the king made silver in Jerusalem as abundant as stones, and cedar as the sycamores in the lowlands. 28And the source of Solomon’s horses was from Muzri and from Kue. The king’s merchants would take them from Kue for a set price. 29And a chariot coming up out of Muzri cost six hundred silver shekels and a horse a hundred fifty. And thus by the sea to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Aram they would bring them out.
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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1. the Queen of Sheba. The consensus is that Sheba is far to the south of ancient Israel, somewhere on the Arabian peninsula along the shore of the Red Sea. This episode is linked associatively with the immediately preceding passage in which Solomon builds fleets on the Red Sea and carries on trade in rich materials with the south.
for the name of the LORD. This phrase, repeatedly used for the building of the Temple, is a little cryptic in the present context. It might mean that Solomon’s fabulous wisdom, granted to him as a special gift by God, was because of its divine source “for the name of the LORD.”
2. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue. This encounter between the queen of a southern kingdom and the great King Solomon has gripped the imagination of readers, writers, and artists over the ages. Among countless elaborations of the story in poetry and painting, an especially memorable one is “The Visit of the Queen of Sheba,” a cycle of poems by the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, which highlights the grand voyage over the Red Sea and teases out an erotic subtext from the biblical tale.
spoke to him all that was in her heart. The heart here is the locus of intellection, not emotion, so what she speaks are all the riddles she had carefully prepared to pose to him.
3. And Solomon told her all her questions. The verb “told,” is regularly used for pronouncing the solution to a riddle, as in the Samson story. “Questions” here is the term that usually means “words” but has to be rendered as “questions” to make the sentence intelligible. It is something of a tease that the story does not divulge any of her riddles—of course, leaving much room for later interpreters.
4. And the Queen of Sheba saw all Solomon’s wisdom. Scholars conventionally classify this story as a Wisdom text, a judgment that might be questioned. Wisdom is celebrated as a value, but in fact there is no Wisdom content in this story (in contrast to Proverbs or Qohelet).
and the house that he had built. She is impressed not only by Solomon’s wisdom but—perhaps just as much—by the material splendor and affluence of his palace and his court. One extravagantly wealthy monarch duly recognizes the tremendous wealth of the other.
5. the burnt offering. Two ancient versions vocalize this word differently to yield “the ascent on which he would go up to the house of the LORD,” though a grand abundance of daily sacrifices would certainly be evidence of his regal wealth.
9. May the LORD your God be blessed. The dazzling impression that Solomon makes on the Queen of Sheba is thus seen as a confirmation of the greatness of YHWH, the God of Israel. At the same time, the whole story of the triumphal encounter of Israel’s king with a great queen from the distant south is a vivid illustration of Solomon’s supreme regal grandeur, which has been a repeated theme in the preceding chapters.
10. And she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold. There is no indication that a wager was involved in solving the riddles, as in the Samson story, although that is possible. The more likely explanation of her act is that she is moved to offer a generous gift from her own great wealth as a gesture of appreciation to the wise and great king. In verse 13, we learn that she on her part asks for an exchange of gifts, to which Solomon readily agrees. Some interpreters see this part of the story as an oblique reflection of trade relations between Israel and Sheba, though it may be more plausible to read it simply as a diplomatic exchange of regal generosity.
a very great abundance of spices. The Arabian peninsula was in fact known in the ancient world for its spices and perfumes, something of which Shakespeare was still aware when he had Lady Macbeth say, “All the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this little hand.”
11. And Hiram’s fleet . . . that bore gold from Ophir. The obvious associative connection is the bringing of precious materials from southern regions. Ophir probably was also in the Arabian peninsula.
16. two hundred shields of . . . gold. These shields and bucklers (the precise distinction between the two Hebrew terms cannot be determined) made of gold are obviously not fashioned to be used in combat but as ornamental objects, evoking by their form the king’s military power and by their substance his great wealth.
17. three hundred. The received text reads “three,” too little if six hundred are used for the shields, but two ancient versions show “three hundred.”
the Lebanon Forest House. If this evidently impressive hall in the palace was, as some claim, an armory, it might have been a symbolic armory because the shields displayed in it were not actually for military use. Verse 21 notes that everything in the House of Lebanon was made of pure gold, so it could even have been a kind of treasury.
22. a Tarshish fleet. Tarshish is generally thought to be a Mediterranean port far to the west, though scholars differ about its precise location. The allied fleets of Solomon and Hiram, however, were plying the Red Sea, so it is more likely that the term refers to a kind of ship—the sort built in Tarshish or outfitted to reach far-off Tarshish. It has also been proposed that the term derives from the Greek tarsos, “oar,” and so designates a sailing ship that is also equipped with oars.
parrots. Others understand the term to mean “peacocks,” although parrots are a better pairing with apes.
23. And King Solomon was greater than all the kings of the earth in wealth and in wisdom. This stature has just been demonstrated in the story of the Queen of Sheba.
26. And Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen. The reiterated emphasis on Solomon’s chariots and horses might reflect historical reality, but it also echoes, perhaps a little ominously, the warning in Deuteronomy 17:16 for the future king, “Only let him not get himself many horses.” The text in Deuteronomy, of course, might be a response to Solomon’s royal extravagances.
twelve thousand horsemen. The fact that the number of horsemen is so much greater than the number of chariots suggests that the term parashim refers both to charioteers and to cavalrymen.
28. And the source of Solomon’s horses was from Muzri and from Kue. Both the geography and the terminology for Solomon’s international horse trading in these last two verses of the chapter are rather obscure. The received text reads Mitsrayim, “Egypt,” which was not known for the export of horses, but many scholars emend this to Mutsri, a town in northern Syria (Kue is in Asia Minor). The substitution of a familiar term for an unfamiliar word is one of the most common causes of scribal error.
29. coming up. Literally, “would come up and go out.” Some interpreters take this as an idiom for “export,” but that is not entirely clear.
by the sea. The Masoretic Text reads beyadam, “in their hand,” which is obscure because there is no clear antecedent for “their.” This translation follows the Septuagint, which appears to have used a Hebrew text that read bayam, a difference of a single consonant. The transportation of horses from the north by ship along the Mediterranean coast seems plausible.
to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Aram. This would mean that Solomon not only purchased horses for his own use but engaged in an international trade of horses. It is also possible that the preposition “to” (a single-consonant particle) is a scribal error for “from.”