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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Kings 10:1 - 10:1
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Visit of the Queen of Saba (cf. 2Ch 9:1-12). - When the fame of Solomon's great wisdom came to the ears of the queen of Saba, probably through the Ophir voyages, she undertook a journey to Jerusalem, to convince herself of the truth of the report which had reached her, by putting it to the test by means of enigmas. שְׁבָא, Σαβά, is not Ethiopia or Meroë, as Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 5), who confounds שְׁבָא with סְבָא, and the Abyssinian Christians suppose (vid., Ludolfi hist. Aeth. ii. 3), but the kingdom of the Sabaeans, who were celebrated for their trade in incense, gold, and precious stones, and who dwelt in Arabia Felix, with the capital Saba, or the Μαριάβα of the Greeks. This queen, who is called Balkis in the Arabian legend (cf. Koran, Sur. 27, and Pococke, Specim. hist. Arab. p. 60), heard the fame of Solomon יְהֹוָה לְשֵׁם; i.e., not “at the naming of the name of Jehovah” (Böttcher), nor “in respect of the glory of the Lord, with regard to that which Solomon had instituted for the glory of the Lord” (Thenius); nor even “serving to the glorification of God” (de Wette and Maurer); but literally, “belonging to the name of the Lord:” in other words, the fame which Solomon had acquired through the name of the Lord, or through the fact that the Lord had so glorified Himself in him (Ewald and Dietrich in Ges. Lex. s.v. לְ). “She came to try him with riddles,” i.e., to put his wisdom to the test by carrying on a conversation with him in riddles. The love of the Arabs for riddles, and their superiority in this jeu d'esprit, is sufficiently well known from the immense extent to which the Arabic literature abounds in Mashals. We have only to think of the large collections of proverbs made by Ali ben Abi Taleb and Meidani, or the Makamen of Hariri, which have been made accessible to all by F. Rückert's masterly translation into German, and which are distinguished by an amazing fulness of word-play and riddles. חִידָה, a riddle, is a pointed saying which merely hints at the deeper truth and leaves it to be guessed.
1Ki 10:2-3
As the queen of a wealthy country, she came with a very large retinue. חַיִל does not mean a military force or an armed escort (Thenius), but riches, property; namely, her numerous retinue of men (עֲבָדִים, 1Ki 10:13), and camels laden with valuable treasures. The words יְקָרָה...גְּמַלִּים are an explanatory circumstantial clause, both here and also in the Chronicles, where the cop. Vav stands before גְּמַלִּים (cf. Ewald, §341, a., b.). “And spake to Solomon all that she had upon her heart,” i.e., in this connection, whatever riddles she had it in her mind to lay before him; “and Solomon told her all her sayings,” i.e., was able to solve all her riddles. There is no ground for thinking of sayings of a religious nature, as the earlier commentators supposed, but simply of sayings the meaning of which was concealed, and the understanding of which indicated very deep wisdom.
1Ki 10:4-5
She saw הַבַּיִת, i.e., Solomon's palace, not the temple, and “the food of his table,” i.e., both the great variety of food that was placed upon the king's table (1Ki 5:2-3), and also the costly furniture of the table (1Ki 10:21), and “the seat of his retainers and the standing of his servants,” i.e., the places in the palace assigned to the ministers and servants of the king, which were contrived with wisdom and arranged in a splendid manner. עֲבָדִים are the chief officers of the king, viz., ministers, counsellors, and aides de camp; מְשָֽׁרְתִים, the court servants; מֹושָׁב, the rooms of the courtiers in attendance; מַעֲמָד, the standing-place, i.e., the rooms of the inferior servants, “and their clothing,” which they received from the king; and מַשְׁקָיו, not his cup-bearers (lxx, Vulg.), but as in Gen 40:21, the drink, i.e., probably the whole of the drinking arrangements; וְעֹלָתֹו, and his ascent, by which he was accustomed to go into the house of Jehovah. עֹלָה does not mean burnt-offering here, as the older translators have rendered it, but ascent, as in Eze 40:26, and as the Chronicles have correctly explained it by עֲלִיָּתֹו. For burnt-offering is not to be thought of in this connection, because the queen had nothing to see or to be astonished at in the presentation of such an offering. עֹלָתֹו is most likely “the king's outer entrance” into the temple, mentioned in 2Ki 16:18; and the passage before us would lead us to suppose that this was a work of art, or an artistic arrangement. וגו הָיָה וְלֹא, “and there was no more spirit in her:” she was beside herself with amazement, as in Jos 5:1; Jos 2:11.
1Ki 10:6-9
She then said with astonishment to Solomon, that of what her eyes now saw she had not heard the half, through the report which had reached her of his affairs and of his wisdom, and which had hitherto appeared incredible to her; and not only congratulated his servants, who stood continually near him and could hear his wisdom, but also praised Jehovah his God, that out of His eternal love to His people Israel He had given them a king to do justice and righteousness. The earlier theologians inferred from this praising of Jehovah, which involved faith in the true God, when taken in connection with Mat 12:42, that this queen had been converted to the true God, and conversed with Solomon on religious matters. But, as we have already observed at 1Ki 5:7, an acknowledgment of Jehovah as the God of Israel was reconcilable with polytheism. And the fact that nothing is said about her offering sacrifice in the temple, shows that the conversion of the queen is not to be thought of here.
1Ki 10:10
She thereupon presented to Solomon a hundred and twenty talents of gold (more than three million thalers nearly half a million sterling - Tr.]), and a very large quantity of spices and precious stones. The בְּשָׂמִים probably included the genuine balsam of Arabia, even if בֹּשֶׂם was not the specific name of the genuine balsam. “There never more came so much of such spices of Jerusalem.” Instead of לָרֹב עֹוד...בָּא לֹא we find in the Chronicles, 1Ki 10:9, simply הָיָה לֹא, “there was nothing like this balsam,” which conveys the same meaning though expressed more indefinitely, since הַהוּא ecni כַּבֹּשֶׂם points back to the preceding words, “balsam (spices) in great quantity.”
(Note: It was this which gave rise to the legend in Josephus (Ant. viii. 6, 6), that it was through this queen that the root of the true balsam (Opobalsamum), which was afterwards cultivated in gardens at Jericho and Engedi, was first of all brought to Palestine (cf. Movers, Phönizier, ii. 3, p. 226ff.).
1Ki 10:11-12
The allusion to these costly presents leads the historian to introduce the remark here, that the Ophir fleet also brought, in addition to gold, a large quantity of Algummim wood (see at 1Ki 9:28) and precious stones. Of this wood Solomon had מִסְעָד or מְסִלֹּות made for the temple and palace. מִסְעָד, from סָעַד, signifies a support, and מְסִלָּה may be a later form for סֻלַּם, a flight of steps or a staircase, so that we should have to think of steps with bannisters. This explanation is at any rate a safer one than that of “divans” (Thenius), which would have been quite out of place in the temple, or “narrow pannelled stripes on the floor” (Bertheau), which cannot in the smallest degree be deduced from מִסְעָד, or “support = moveables, viz., tables, benches, footstools, boxes, and drawers” (Böttcher), which neither harmonizes with the temple, where there was no such furniture, nor with the מְסִלֹּות of the Chronicles. “And guitars and harps for the singers,” probably for the temple singers. כִּנֹּור and נֶבֶל are string instruments; the former resembling our guitar rather than the harp, the strings being carried over the sounding-board upon a bridge, the latter being of a pitcher shape without any sounding bridge, as in the case of the harps.
1Ki 10:13
Solomon gave the queen of Saba all that she wished and asked for, beside what he gave her “according to the hand,” i.e., the might, of the king; that is to say, in addition to the presents answering to his might and his wealth, which he was obliged to give as a king, according to the Oriental custom. In the Chronicles (1Ki 10:12) we find “beside that which she had brought (הֵבִיאָה) to the king,” which is an abbreviated expression for “beside that which he gave her in return for what she had brought to him,” or beside the return presents corresponding to her gifts to him, as it has been already correctly paraphrased by the Targum.