Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Queen of Sheba, and Solomon's End
2 Chronicles 9:1-31
1 When the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to test Solomon with hard questions at Jerusalem, with a very great caravan, including camels that bore spices, gold in abundance, and precious stones. When she had come to Solomon, she talked with him about all that was in her heart. · WEB
A foreign monarch comes to test the wisdom and leaves crediting the God who gave it, and the reign closes without a single word of criticism.
She comes to test Solomon with hard questions 2 Chronicles 9:1, and the visit is an examination rather than a courtesy. The verdict is delivered after she has seen everything: half of the greatness of your wisdom wasn't told me 2 Chronicles 9:6.
What impresses her is listed in an odd order — the wisdom, the house, the food, the seating, the servants' clothing, and finally his ascent by which he went up to Yahweh's house 2 Chronicles 9:4. The last item in the list is the route to the temple, and it is where the account of what she saw stops.
Her speech then does something a foreign head of state need not have done. She blesses Israel's God, and she reads the whole arrangement correctly: God set you on his throne to be king for Yahweh your God, because your God loved Israel 2 Chronicles 9:8.
That is the book's own doctrine, spoken by an outsider. The throne is God's 1 Chronicles 29:23; the king holds it on his behalf; and the reason given is not the king's merit but God's regard for the nation — which is exactly what the king of Tyre had said seven chapters earlier 2 Chronicles 2:11. Two foreign monarchs, independently, state the point the book exists to make. And she names the purpose of the office in the last words she speaks: to do justice and righteousness.
The gold that follows is inventoried at length — tribute from every quarter, silver made as common in Jerusalem as stones, four thousand stalls, horses from Egypt 2 Chronicles 9:25–28. The account of the reign ends where its first chapter ended, on the same image.
What is not here is the criticism. This telling records no foreign wives turning his heart, no high places built for their gods, no adversaries raised up against him in his old age, and no rebuke. The reign is closed with the sources named — writings of a prophet, a prophecy, and the visions of a seer 2 Chronicles 9:29 — and the reader is pointed to them for the rest.
The selection is consistent with everything this book does. It is written about the house and the throne, and Solomon built the one and held the other. The failures are on record elsewhere and the writer says where. What he supplies is the reign as it bears on the sanctuary, and on that subject there is nothing to reproach.
One detail of the collapse to come is planted here without emphasis. The sources are described as concerning Jeroboam the son of Nebat 2 Chronicles 9:29, a man not otherwise mentioned in these nine chapters. He is in the next verse of the next chapter, and the kingdom is gone.
held with reason What this mark means