1 Kings 10:1

And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon,.... Josephus (u) calls her a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia; but Sheba was in the southern part of Arabia Felix; her name with the Ethiopians is

And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to prove him with hard questions. The queen of Sheba.

1 KINGS CHAPTER 10 The queen of Sheba cometh to Jerusalem; admireth Solomon’ s wisdom and glory; giveth God thanks, and Solomon presents, . His riches, ; targets, ivory throne, vessels, ; presents, chariots and horses, tribute, . The queen of Sheba; either, first, Of Ethiopia, as that people by constant tradition from their ancestors affirm, which also was truly in the ends of the earth, whence she came, . Or rather, secondly, Of that part of Arabia called Sabaea, which was at a great distance from Jerusalem, and really in the ends of the earth, and bordering upon the southern sea; for there, much more than in Ethiopia, were the commodities which she brought, ,10. Howsoever, this is there said for her commendation, that being a woman, and a queen, and living at great ease, and in such remote parts, she was willing to take so long and chargeable a journey to improve herself in knowledge, and that of Divine things, as is here implied. Concerning the name of the Lord, i.e. concerning the great work which he had done for the name, i.e. the honour, and service, and worship, of the Lord, as it is expressed , and elsewhere. Or, concerning God; the name of God being oft put for God, as hath been noted before; concerning his deep knowledge in the things of God. For it is very probable that she had, as also had divers other heathens, some knowledge of the true God, and an earnest desire to know more of the being, and nature, and worship of God, wherein the heathens were generally at a great loss, and which many of them desired and endeavoured to understand. Or, concerning the great things which God had done for him, especially in giving him such incomparable wisdom, and that in an extraordinary manner. With hard questions; concerning natural, and civil, and especially concerning Divine things, about which there are, and ever where, the hardest questions.

1 Kings 10:1 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to prove him with hard questions.Ver. 1. And when the queen of Sheba.] Nicaula, Josephus calleth her; the Rabbis, Nicolas; others, Maqueda. Her country some make to be Arabia Felix, others Ethiopia Southward it lay, and far from Jerusalem. A sibyl some make her to be. Concerning the name of the Lord.] What great things God had done for Solomon, and what he had done by way of thankful retribution to God, in building him a house, and setting up his sincere service there. The Rabbis think that by this expression is imported, that she took Solomon for the promised Messiah. She came to prove him with hard questions.] Such as elsewhere she could not get a satisfying solution to. With these problems or riddles, of great importance, doubtless, she both proved and profited by his wisdom. In lib. Juchas Dam. a Goes. Genebrard. Glycas Gelatin., lib. viii. cap. 3.

(1) The queen of Sheba.—The name “Sheba” must be distinguished from Seba, or Saba (which begins with a different Hebrew letter), (a) The name Seba denotes a Cushite race (Genesis 10:7), connected, in Isaiah 43:3; Isaiah 45:14, with Egypt and Cush, and named with Sheba (“the kings of Sheba and Seba”)in the Psalm of Solomon (Psalms 72:10). Seba is, indeed, with great probability identified (see Jos. Ant. ii. 10, 2) with the Ethiopian city and island of Meroë. It is probably from confusion between Sheba and Saba that Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 5) represents the queen of Sheba as a “queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.” (b) The name “Sheba” is found in the ethnological lists of Gen 10:7, among the descendants of Cush of the Hamite race, in Genesis 10:28, among the Semitic Joktanites, and in Genesis 25:3, among the Abrahamic children of Keturah. The kingdom of Sheba referred to in this passage must certainly be placed in Arabia Felix, the habitation of the Joktanite race (in which the Keturahites appear to have been merged), for the Cushite Sheba is probably to be found elsewhere on the Persian Gulf. The queen of Sheba would therefore be of Semitic race, not wholly an alien from the stock of Abraham.The fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord.—If the reading of the text be correct, the phrase “concerning: the name of the Lord” (to which there is nothing to correspond in 2 Chronicles 9:1) must refer to the constant connection of the fame of Solomon—especially in relation to his wisdom, which is here mainly referred to—with the name of Jehovah, as the God to whom, in the erection of the Temple, he devoted both his treasure and himself.Hard questions—or, riddles. The Arabian legends preserved in the Koran enumerate a list of questions and puzzles, propounded by the queen and answered by Solomon, too puerile to be worth mention. The “hard questions” (in which Solomon is said by Josephus to have had a contest with Hiram also) must surely have been rather those enigmatic and metaphorical sayings, so familiar to Eastern philosophy, in which the results of speculation, metaphysical or religious, are tersely embodied. The writings representing the age of Solomon—Job, Proverbs, and (whatever be its actual date) Ecclesiastes—are all concerned with these great problems, moral and speculative, which belong to humanity as such, especially in its relation to God. In solving these problems, rather than the merely fantastic ingenuity of what we call riddles, the wisdom of Solomon would be worthily employed.

CHAPTER X The queen of Sheba visits Solomon, and brings rich presents; and tries him by hard questions, which he readily solves, 1-3. She expresses great surprise at his wisdom, his buildings, his court, c. and praises God for placing him on the Jewish throne, 4-9. She gives him rich presents, 10. What the navy of Hiram brought from Ophir, 11, 12. The queen of Sheba returns, 13. Solomon's annual revenue, 14, 15. He makes two hundred targets and three hundred shields of gold, 16, 17. His magnificent ivory throne, 18-20. His drinking vessels all of gold, 21. What the navy of Tharshish brought every three years to Solomon, 22. His great riches, numerous chariots, and horsemen, 23-27. He brings chariots and horses out of Egypt, 28, 29. NOTES ON CHAP. X Verse 1. When the queen of Sheba heard] As our Lord calls her queen of the south, (Matthew 12:42), it is likely the name should be written Saba, Azab, or Azaba, all of which signify the south. She is called Balkis by the Arabians, but by the Abyssinians Maqueda. See the account at the end of this chapter. 1Kg 10:29. With hard questions.] בחידות bechidoth; Septuagint, εναινιγμασι, riddles. With parables and riddles, says the Arabic.

Ch. 1 Kings 10:1-13. The Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon (2 Chronicles 9:1-12) 1. Now when the queen of Sheba heard] The ‘Sheba’, of which the queen is here mentioned, was that part of Arabia spoken of in the note on the last verse of the preceding chapter. It embraced the greater part of Arabia Felix. Josephus and many Jewish writers represent her as the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, making ωׁ ?αΰ (Sheba) the same as ραΰ (Seba), and this tradition is firmly rooted among the Abyssinians (i.e. Ethiopians), but there is no ground at all for identifying Sheba with the Ethiopian kingdom of Seba. Moreover the presents which the queen brought with her bespeak the land from which she came. They are Arabian, certainly not African. concerning the name of the Lord] From the expressions so frequent in chap. 8. about ‘a house built for the name of the Lord God of Israel’ (see 1 Kings 8:17-20; 1 Kings 8:29; 1 Kings 8:35; 1 Kings 8:43-44; 1 Kings 8:48) we may be sure that wherever the grand building was mentioned, there would be heard something about the name of Him to whose honour it was built. In like manner, at an earlier date, the people of Israel were known among other nations ‘because of the name of the Lord.’ See Joshua 9:9, where the Gibeonites say ‘we have heard the fame of Him, and all that He did in Egypt.’ Through caravans travelling hither and thither there can be little doubt that knowledge of Solomon’s works was widely spread, and communication with the Sabζans was a matter of no great difficulty. In the parallel passage (2 Chronicles 9:1) there is nothing said about ‘the name of the Lord’; the LXX. has ‘she had heard the name of Solomon and the name of the Lord.’ Some interpreters take the expression ‘concerning the name of the Lord’ to signify that the wisdom which Solomon had was derived from the Lord, and this made him famous. Some countenance is given to this opinion by the questions wherewith the queen essayed to test his wisdom, but it does not so well connect itself with ‘the name.’ she came to prove him with hard questions] Josephus (Ant. viii. 6. 5) says ‘she could not trust to hearsay, for the report might have been built upon false judgement, and might change, as it depended solely upon the persons who brought it.’ The ‘proving with hard questions’ recalls the story of Samson’s riddle (Judges 14:12). The giving of such riddles was not an uncommon pastime among the ancients, and we have specimens among the Greeks, who called them γρῖφοι. Cf. Aristoph. Vesp. 20, and especially Athenζus 10. 69–78, where the author gives an account of the various kinds of riddles, and later in chap. 83 gives specimens of them. The Arabs were specially given to this kind of amusement, and we find in Josephus (Ant. viii. 5.

Doubt has arisen whether the “queen of Sheba” was an Ethiopian or an Arabian princess.

1. Sheba — Not the Cushite kingdom of this name in Ethiopia, as Josephus and others hold, but the region in Southern Arabia originally settled by Sheba the son of Joktan, (Genesis 10:28,) and