>> Jen: Hey faith listeners. Good morning and welcome to the Bible Explained podcast. Today we're going to be in 1 Kings chapter 10 talking about the Queen of Sheba. I hope you guys have had a great start to your week so far. Today we're going to be talking about this very mysterious queen that we really don't know a lot about, but she's mentioned a few times in scripture and even Jesus himself mentions
her. So let's go ahead and read First Kings chapter 10 and grab your cup of seven weeks coffee, the coffee brand that supports life in the womb. They have been able to raise, I think, half a million dollars for pregnancy centers across the US which is absolutely fantastic. They're doing great work and they're making great coffee as well. So I definitely suggest trying them out. My link is listed in the description of this episode.
When you Click my link, 10% of your purchase goes to a pregnancy center in the US and another 10% benefits P40 ministry and the Bible Explained podcast. Alright guys, let's read 1 Kings 10, 1:13. I'll be reading from the web as usual. When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning Yahweh's name, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great caravan, with camels that bore spices, very much gold, and precious
stones. And when she had come to Solomon, she talked with him about all that was in her heart. Solomon answered all her questions. There wasn't anything hidden from the king, which he didn't tell her. When the Queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the sitting of his servants, the attendance of his officials, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his ascent, by which he went up to Yahweh's house. There was
no more spirit in her. She said to the king, it was a true report that I heard in my own land of your acts and of your wisdom. However, I didn't believe the words until I came and my eyes had seen it. Behold, not even half was told to me, you, wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame which I heard. Happy are your men, happy are these your servants, who stand continually before you, who hear your wisdom. Blessed is Yahweh your god, who delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel, because
Yahweh loved Israel forever. Therefore he made you king to do justice and righteousness. She gave the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones. Never again Was there such an abundance of spices as these which
the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon? The fleet of Hiram had brought gold from Ophir, also brought in from Ophir great quantities of almug trees and precious stones the king made of the almug trees, pillars for Yahweh's house and for the king's house, harps, and also stringed instruments for the singers. No such Almec trees came or were seen to this day. King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire, whatever she asked, in addition to that which Solomon gave her of his
royal bounty. So she turned and went to her own land, she and her servants. So at this point in time, Solomon's fame has gotten so great that people thousands of miles away are beginning to hear about him. They're beginning to hear about his wisdom and how prosperous he is and what he's doing for Israel. So this Queen of Sheba heard about Solomon's fame, specifically it says,
concerning Yahweh's name. So that's really interesting that Solomon's fame was getting to be so big that people were attributing it to Yahweh. So the Queen of Sheba hears about all of this and her curiosity is piqued. It's so peaked, in fact, that she decides to head up a caravan, a camel caravan, to go and meet King Solomon. Now, there's not a lot of information known about the Queen of Sheba or who she was.
She doesn't have a name in scripture, and so nobody really knows what her name is, but apparently a handful of myths have been written about her, which are hilarious, by the way, if you want to look them up, you totally should. And also she's claimed by both the people who live in Ethiopia and also the people of Yemen. So we're not exactly sure where she's from, but most people think that Sheba was located in modern day Saba
of Yemen. So if you look up commentaries, pretty much all of them will say that she was from Yemen. But it could be that she was also from Ethiopia, because it mentions in this portion of First Kings that she brought a whole bunch of spices with her on this camel caravan. And it turns out that many of the spices in the ancient days either came from Yemen or came from Ethiopia. So that is why both the Ethiopians and the Yemenis claim the Queen of Sheba
as their own. So she comes to test Solomon, it says, with hard questions, because she's heard about his amazing wisdom and how all of this is being attributed to Yahweh. So she is so curious. She puts all of these gifts together. This caravan, it says, with camels that bore spices, very much gold, and precious stones. And so she comes to Solomon. So this would probably have been a. If she was from Yemen, it would have been about 1500 miles that this queen traveled to go visit King
Solomon. And actually Jesus mentions the Queen of Sheba in Matthew chapter, um. What is this? Matthew 12, verses 39 through 42. In Jesus Day, a whole bunch of Israelites were coming to him asking for a sign. And Jesus got really angry because he was giving them, like, sign after sign. And he's like, yeah, I'm not going to give you a sign. So here's what he says to the people. It says, some of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law came to him and said, teacher, we want to see a sign from
you. Jesus answered, a, uh, wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but none will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And now something greater than Jonah is
here. The Queen of the south will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here. So even Jesus recognized how far the Queen of Sheba traveled to go meet Solomon. And in a way, this was the Queen of Sheba being very wise in her own sense, because she heard about the wisdom of Solomon, she heard about the prosperity of Israel, and she has heard about the
fame of Yahweh's name. And she wants to go experience these things for herself and see if they're actually the truth first and foremost. And possibly this was also a business, uh, trip as well, so that maybe she could start trading with Solomon or something along those lines. But she wanted to discover the truth all on her own. And so she went. She didn't trust anybody to bring the news back to her. She decided to take that very long and annoying trip
across the desert, pretty much on foot. Well, uh, she probably wasn't on foot, but everybody else was. She decided to take an uncomfortable trip across the desert to go and visit Solomon. So when she finally gets to Solomon, it says in verse two, she talked with him about all that was in her heart. And she came with a bunch of riddles, it says, and very deep and hard questions to ask Solomon. And so when she gets to him, she
just lays it all out on the table. And it says that Solomon answered every single one of her difficult questions. And they were probably all sorts of different questions. They're probably political questions, uh, mathematical questions, spiritual questions. She probably had a whole slew of questions that she had written up for herself to ask Solomon. Now, here's the other interesting thing. And Scripture doesn't say anything about this, but this was something I thought about.
Solomon is noted to be very wise, right? And the Queen of Sheba probably did not speak Solomon's language. But I personally think that because Solomon was so wise, he probably knew the language that she was speaking and possibly was able to respond to her in her own language, these difficult questions. And I bet you even that was very impressive to this queen. It doesn't say that, but I would imagine Solomon probably spoke many different languages throughout his lifetime because he
was a very impressive person. He was the most wise person on the planet, and he was very knowledgeable about many different topics. Actually, Scripture even says that he used to host his own TED Talks where people from all over the ancient world would come and hear him speak about different topics. Whether it was about farming or about spiritual things or about how trees grow or the fish in the sea. They'd come, hear him speak about all these different things.
So this Queen of Sheba, she kind of does the same thing, but because she's a queen, she gets a personal audience with Solomon. But it says that after she hears Solomon's wisdom and, uh, looks at everything that's going on in Israel, it says that she. She saw all the food of his table. She saw the house that he had built. She saw his servants, the attendance of his officials, and all their clothing, their beautiful clothing, his cup bearers. And also she saw the
temple to Yahweh. It says after she sees all these things, her spirit, like, fades out of her body. There was no more spirit in her, is what it says. So she. She gave up. She was like, I'm. I'm done asking questions. I don't need to see anything more. Everything is so impressive. And that's the thing. This woman was a queen. Think about this
caravan that came into Israel. There was, like, probably hundreds of camels, all bearing this gold and these precious jewels and these spices, along with thousands of people that probably accompanied her across the desert to go and visit Solomon, she was used to a life of luxury. Every single luxury that you can get. And yet the Queen of Sheba was overwhelmed at how wonderful everything in Israel was.
Just think about how successful Israel must have been if a queen who had every single luxury on the planet that could be handed to her, that she was impressed with Israel. That says a lot about what King Solomon had built. So she says to the king, it was a true report that I heard in my own land of your acts and of your wisdom. See this woman, she was a seeker of truth. She wanted the truth. And that is why Jesus himself mentioned her in that passage of Matthew that I read earlier.
He mentions that she was a seeker of truth and that the Queen of Sheba was actually going to rise up at the end and judge the Israelites who were refusing to listen to Jesus. The Queen of Sheba, because she wanted the truth, and the people who rejected Jesus did not want the truth. The Queen of Sheba was going to someday rise up and judge the wicked generation of
Jesus. Time period. Now, we do not know if the Queen of Sheba started worshiping Yahweh or not, but it's kind of implied that she did both with what Jesus says about her in Matthew chapter 12, and also what 1st Kings 10 says that she says. She says to the king, I did not believe the words of your wisdom until I came and my eyes had seen it. Behold, not even half was told to me. Your wisdom and your prosperity exceed the
fame which I heard about. Happy are your men, happy are these your servants who stand continually before you, who hear your wisdom. Blessed is Yahweh your God who delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel, because Yahweh loved Israel forever. Therefore he made you the king to do justice and righteousness. So the Queen of Sheba had a solid understanding of why Solomon was the king. He was the king because Yahweh had set him on the throne.
Which is really interesting, because, you know, David, Solomon's dad, who was the king before him, had a ton of different sons, right? And many of these sons actually were before Solomon. And most tradition goes that the firstborn son after the king becomes the next king. But that didn't happen in the case of Solomon. He was like the fourth or fifth born or something like that. And yet Solomon became the king. And that's because god chose Solomon
out of all of those sons of David. And the Queen of Sheba understood that. She said, God is the one who set you on this throne. And it's because he loved Israel. To give them such a wise and commanding and wonderful leader such as you. And this is absolutely fascinating because this is the one time we see Israel kind of doing what they were supposed to be doing with the Old Testament law. The Old Testament law was given to the Israelites so that they could
follow it. And when they follow it, god would bless them tremendously. They would be blessed so much that the other nations all around the world would begin to hear about Israel's prosperity and blessing that came from Yahweh. Then all of these people would be curious and wonder what kind of a god is Yahweh that he's blessing his people like this? So they would go and they would travel to Israel. They would learn about it. They would learn about the Old Testament
law. And in a way, Israel was supposed to be evangelizing for Yahweh by following the Old Testament laws. And unfortunately, Israel almost never did it. They never followed the Old Testament laws the way they were supposed to. But this is the one time we can kind of see Israel doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is really interesting because Solomon often had his heart turned away from god. It does say that Solomon loved God, but it says that his heart was divided.
So he had the cares of the world that he really cared about, but he also had Yahweh that he really cared about. And Solomon kind of split the difference. And obviously we'll read more about that in the coming chapters. But Solomon did not always do what he was supposed to do. But yet, because Solomon was wise and because he did love Yahweh, and because he had asked for wisdom from God instead of riches or a long life or something like that,
God blessed Solomon tremendously. And through Solomon, God also blessed Israel tremendously. And so Israel now is evangelizing the way that they were supposed to be doing. Where the Queen of Sheba is beginning to hear about Solomon and Yahweh's name, just because of the fame and the prosperity that Israel is experiencing at this point. The one time in history we see Israel kind of doing what they should be doing with the Old Testament law is right here in this chapter.
So the Queen of Sheba, she's super impressed. She blesses Yahweh, she blesses Solomon. And it says that she gave the king 120 talents of gold and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones. Never again was there such an abundance of spices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. So these were tremendous spices. Israel never seen anything like it at any point in
time ever again. It also mentions here, it's kind of funny, the author of First Kings kind of switches his tune a little bit because he had just mentioned all these spices in this huge quantity. He switches to King Hiram and Hiram's fleet of ships that had gone to Ophir in the previous chapter and had brought back a whole bunch of gold for Solomon. Apparently, these sailors who went to Ophir also came back with great quantities of almug trees, which nobody knows what an almug tree is, and nobody
knows where Ophir is. A lot of people say that Ophir was in India. And, uh, these trees were potentially some sort of, um, like a birch tree or. I'm sorry, no, not a birch tree. A Indian sandalwood tree is what my footnote says. So that's what they think almug trees are. But nobody has any clue. They don't know where Ophir is or what almug trees are. And these almug trees, though, were so valuable, kind of like those spices that Queen
Sheba brought. And that was what made the author switch over to the almug trees, because he remembered that, oh, yeah, the almug trees were also very precious, just like the spices that the Queen of Sheba brought. But anyway, these almug trees, it says, were made for pillars for Yahweh's house and also for the king's house. And then the rest of them were made into stringed instruments. No such alma trees ever came or were seen to this day. So this is. This is just how
rich Israel has become. This entire chapter is going to show just the wealth of Israel and what King Solomon had done for Israel. Well, anyway, after it says the Queen of Sheba was done giving all these gifts to Solomon, it says that the king gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire, whatever she asked, in addition to that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So she also left with a whole bunch of goods from Israel. Now, this friendship between Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba has been made. Now, of course, like I said, there's so many myths about the Queen of Sheba, really funny ones, by the way. But one of the biggest ones is that Solomon and Sheba loved each other and ended up getting married. But there's no biblical evidence for that. It says Sheba turned and went to her own land, she and her servants. So she was satisfied with what she had seen. And the rest of the chapter, when we come back on Monday, is going to talk about all of the other
wealth that Solomon had as well. So I hope that you guys tune in on Monday and I hope you guys liked today's episode as well. And if you did, make sure to share it on your social media platforms. Tell people that the Bible Explained podcast exists and make sure to check out seven Weeks Coffee, the coffee brand that supports life in the womb. But I'll see you guys tomorrow, 6am or whenever you choose to wake up and listen. Happy listening and God bless.