Chapter Ten
1–13. The visit of the Queen of Sheba. 14–25. The wealth of Solomon, the luxury and magnificence of his court and his fame among the kings of the earth. 26–29. Solomon’s cavalry.
1 Kings 10:1. The Queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon’s fame in the name of the Lord, came to test him with riddles. The residence and kingdom of the Queen of Sheba (Heb. Sheba) is usually considered to be in Happy Arabia (Gen 10:7; 1 Chr 1:9). According to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews VIII, 6, 5), on the contrary, she lived and reigned in Ethiopia; Josephus’s opinion is repeated by Eusebius–Jerome (Onomast 807) and the blessed Theodoret (question 33). But Josephus’s opinion is based on confusing the tribe of Sheba (Arabian) with the tribe of Seba—Cushite (Isa 43:3; Ps 71:10). In Muslim tradition the name of the Queen of Sheba—Bilkis—has been preserved (cf. Quran, sura 27, 29, Russian trans. by Prof. G. Sablukoff, Kazan, 1877, p. 322). The purpose of the Queen of Sheba’s visit is thus defined: “came to test him (Solomon) with riddles”; contests of wit were at that time customary among the Arabs, among whom the wise men of one tribe sought the opportunity to contest with the wise men of another friendly tribe (cf. Judg 14:12-19). Such a contest in riddle-solving, according to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews VIII, 5, 3), also took place in Solomon’s dealings with Hiram of Tyre. In the Gospel, in the words of the Lord (Matt 12:42; Luke 11:31) the purpose of the Queen of Sheba’s coming is indicated as the desire to hear Solomon’s wisdom, as a weak prefigurement of the Divine wisdom of the Lord’s teaching, and in this respect she is a type of all the Gentiles, who apart from the law tended toward Christ and subsequently in deed turned to Him (the blessed Theodoret, question 33).
1 Kings 10:2. And she came to Jerusalem with very great wealth: camels laden with spices and a great quantity of gold and precious stones; and she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that was on her heart. Among the gifts with which, according to the customs of the East, the Queen of Sheba testified to Solomon her respect (cf. Ps 71:10), mention is made of “spices” (Heb. besamin), probably a balsam plant: according to Josephus, the plant growing in Palestine near Jericho and yielding the root of opobalsamum traces its origin to the Queen of Sheba (Antiquities of the Jews VIII, 6, 6); this plant, without doubt, comes from Arabia (Prof. Guliaev, p. 232). “Came to Solomon”—a repeated expression (cf. v. 1), which according to the Rabbis means supposedly a marriage union of Solomon with the Queen of Sheba.
1 Kings 10:3. And Solomon explained to her all her words, and there was nothing hidden from the king that he did not explain to her. “Nothing hidden”—(from the Heb. hidden, nelam), Slavonic: “no word was disregarded”—a literal translation of the inaccurate Greek expression: οὐκ ἤν λόγος παρεωραμένος.
1 Kings 10:4. And when the Queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the house that he had built, 1 Kings 10:5. and the food at his table, and the seating of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their clothing, and his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings which he offered in the house of the Lord. And she could no longer restrain herself Solomon’s wisdom was manifested before the Queen of Sheba not in words alone but in all the institutions, orders, and arrangements of his court. “And she could no longer restrain herself”, Slavonic: “was beside herself”, in the LXX: ἐαυτῆς ἐγένετο, from the Heb.: there was no spirit in her (Vulg.: non habebat ultra spiritum).
1 Kings 10:6. And she said to the king: The report which I heard in my land of your achievements and of your wisdom is true; 1 Kings 10:7. but I did not believe the report until I came, and my own eyes have seen it; and behold, the half has not been told to me; you have greater wisdom and wealth than the report I heard. 1 Kings 10:8. Blessed are your people and blessed are these your servants who always stand before you and hear your wisdom! 1 Kings 10:9. Blessed be the Lord your God, who delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king, to execute justice and righteousness. 1 Kings 10:10. And she gave the king one hundred twenty talents of gold and a great quantity of spices and precious stones; no such abundance of spices was ever brought as what the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Acknowledging that the fame and wisdom of Solomon surpassed the report about him, the queen considers those around Solomon blessed (vv. 6–8). Instead of “your people” (from Heb.), the Slavonic text has (from the Greek) “your wives” (αἱ γυναῖκές): the LXX read in the Hebrew text not anaschim (men) as in the present Masoretic text, but naschim (women); and this reading (in connection with the following “blessed are these your servants”) deserves preference over the Hebrew—Russian text. From the fact that the queen blesses Yahweh, one should not infer that she became a proselyte, just as similar words of Hiram (1 Kgs 5:7), contrary to the opinion of the Rabbis who considered them both proselytes of Judaism. V. 10 cf. 13. The gifts of the queen and Solomon to each other—a customary expression in the East of respect and honor (cf. Ps 71:10; Matt 2:11).
1 Kings 10:11. And the ships of Hiram, which brought gold from Ophir, also brought from Ophir a great quantity of almug wood and precious stones. 1 Kings 10:12. And the king used the almug wood to make railings for the house of the Lord and for the royal house, and to make lyres and harps for the singers; never again was such almug wood brought or seen to this day. By association with the account of the rich gifts of the Queen of Sheba (v. 10), mention is again made (cf. 1 Kgs 9:28) of the treasures brought by the fleet sailing to Ophir (cf. below v. 22). Here, along with precious stones, the wood almug is mentioned—commonly understood as red sandalwood or black ebony, growing in India and Persia (Gesenius, Thesaurus linguae hebr., p. 23; according to Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews VIII, 7, 1—pine or fir). From this precious wood Solomon made “railings” or “platforms” (Heb. misad), cf. (2 Chr 9:11) for the temple and palace (according to some—divans along the walls), as well as musical instruments: lyres (Heb. kinnorot) and harps (nevaliм), according to the LXX: νάβλας καὶ κινύρα, Vulg.: citharas lyrasque, Slavonic: “pipes and harps.” Both are string instruments (Ps 70:22): the difference between them lay partly in the different construction of the resonating box and partly in the manner of playing (cf. the blessed Theodoret, question 34).
1 Kings 10:14. The gold that came to Solomon each year weighed six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, 1 Kings 10:15. besides what came from merchants and traders and from all the kings of Arabia and from the governors of the land. The annual income of Solomon: 666 talents of gold, according to Keil’s calculation, equaled 17 million thalers, on our money—about 20 million rubles. A talent—3000 shekels or 50 minas (Exod 38:25). Solomon’s special, of course annual income consisted of tolls from merchants and traders, as well as tribute from the conquered kings of “Arabia” (Heb. ereb, in the LXX: τοῦ πέραν, Slavonic: “foreign”).
1 Kings 10:16. And King Solomon made two hundred large shields of beaten gold, using six hundred shekels of gold for each shield; 1 Kings 10:17. and three hundred small shields of beaten gold, using three minas of gold for each shield; and the king put these in the House of the Forest of Lebanon. 1 Kings 10:18. And the king made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with pure gold; 1 Kings 10:19. the throne had six steps, and there was a round top to the throne, and on both sides of the seat were armrests, and two lions stood beside the armrests; 1 Kings 10:20. and twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. Nothing like it was made for any kingdom. 1 Kings 10:21. All King Solomon’s drinking vessels were gold, and all the vessels in the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon; Among the objects of luxury in Solomon’s palace the sacred writer mentions: a) two types of golden shields: large shields, Heb. tsinah, weighing 600 shekels each, which covered the entire body, and a smaller one—Heb. magen, weighing 3 minas (180 shekels) or 300 shekels (2 Chr 9:16); the shields were placed in the House of the Forest of Lebanon; they apparently had no military significance, but were used in ceremonial royal processions (1 Kgs 14:28); b) a throne of ivory (vv. 18–20); regarding its structure according to Jewish tradition see the note to (1 Kgs 7:7).
1 Kings 10:22. For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish with the fleet of Hiram: once every three years the fleet of Tarshish came bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and monkeys. Tarshish (Heb. Tarshish), according to the commonly accepted opinion, is a Phoenician colony in Spain (cf. Isa 23:10; Jer 10:9; Ezek 38:13). But the expression “ships of Tarshish at sea” does not mean a ship or fleet sailing to Tarshish (as mistakenly in (2 Chr 9:21). Vulg.: ibat in Tharsis): Solomon’s fleet sailed to Ophir (1 Kgs 9:28), not to Tarshish; this expression has a general sense: an ocean-going ship, a ship for distant voyages, like today we have epithets for steamships “Greenlandic” or “East-Indian.” Josephus, on the other hand, saw here the name of a gulf of the Mediterranean Sea near the Cilician city of Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul: “Solomon,” says Josephus, “had a multitude of ships in the so-called Tarsic Sea” (Antiquities of the Jews VIII, 7, 2). But nothing is known about the latter from the biblical text. Among the goods brought by the fleet are mentioned apes (Heb. kofim) and monkeys (Heb. tukkiim). Josephus considered the latter word to be a designation of slaves, Ethiopians.
1 Kings 10:23. Thus King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth in wealth and wisdom. 1 Kings 10:24. And all the kings on earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom that God had put in his heart. 1 Kings 10:25. And they brought every one his tribute: vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and garments, and armor, and spices, horses, and mules, year by year. 1 Kings 10:26. And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen; and he stationed them in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. The pinnacle of Solomon’s fame (cf. 2 Chr 9:22-34). Regarding chariots and cavalry cf. (1 Kgs 4:26; 2 Chr 1:14-16). The repeated mention of them is intended to mark their novelty for Israel and, perhaps, the contradiction with the law concerning the king (Deut 17:16).
1 Kings 10:27. And the king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the Shephelah. A figurative and hyperbolic expression to denote the luxury of Solomon’s court life. The sycamore, Heb. shikma, Greek: σικόμορος συκαμινος, Slavonic: “mulberry”—the lower kind of fig tree, a tree of low height (Isa 9:10).
1 Kings 10:28. And Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue; and the king’s merchants bought them from Kue at a price. 1 Kings 10:29. A chariot from Egypt was imported for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for one hundred fifty. And so through the merchants they exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of the Arameans. The purchase of horses was conducted on the border with Egypt. “From Kue”, Slavonic: “from Tekuah”, LXX: ἐχ Θεκουε, Vulg.: de Coa. The corresponding Hebrew word miqve is understood in two ways: either as a single whole word miqve (multitude, throng) (cf. Gen 1:10; Exod 7:19; Lev 11:36), in this case: “a caravan (of merchants)” or “a herd (of horses)”; or, according to the translations LXX, Vulg., and others, the mentioned word is divided into two: min-kve (Kue), with the latter considered as the name of a place or province in Cilicia or on the border of Egypt (Winkler, Bretz, Keil). The latter opinion deserves preference. * * * In the Greek translation: forty thousand horses.