1 Kings 10:1

WEB

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.

KJV

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.

Commentary

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 Maqueda (w), and with the Arabic geographer (x) Belequis. Some (y) think that Sheba, or Saba, is not the name of a country, but of the queen herself; and that she is the same with Sabbe the sibyl mentioned by Pausanias (z); but no doubt Sheba or Saba, the metropolis of Arabia Felix, as Philostorgius (a) calls it, is here meant; which Benjamin of Tudela says (b) is called the country of Al Yeman, or the south; and the name of Queen Teiman, given to this queen by an Arabic writer (c), seems to be the same as the queen of the south; see Gill on Mat 12:42 . The fame of Solomon's greatness and goodness, of his wealth and riches, and especially of his wisdom, had reached her ears; perhaps by means of the ambassadors of princes that had been at Solomon's court, and attended her's. According to an Ethiopic writer (d) it was by Tamerinus, a merchant of her's, she came to hear of him: particularly she heard of his fame concerning the name of the Lord; his knowledge of the true God, the favour he was in with him, the excellent wisdom he had received from him, and what he had done for his honour and glory: she came to prove him with hard questions; in things natural, civil, and divine; to try whether he had such a share of knowledge and wisdom it was said he had, she posed him with enigmas, riddles, dark and intricate sayings, to unravel and tell the meaning of. She might be an emblem of the Gentiles, seeking unto Christ, having heard of him, Isa 11:10 . In Mat 12:42 she is said to come from the "uttermost parts of the earth"; wherefore some fetch her from Sumatra in the East Indies, where in an old map no other name is put but Sheba (e). (u) Antiqu. l. 8. c. 6. sect. 2, 5. (w) Ludolf. Ethiop. Hist. l. 2. c. 3. (x) Clim 1. par. 6. (y) Vid. Coryli Disser. de Reg. Austral. c. l. sect. 1, 2. (z) Phocica, sive, l. 10. p. 631. (a) Hist. Eccl. l. 3. c. 4. (b) Itinerar. p. 82. (c) Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. Dyn. 3. p. 54. (d) Tellezius apud Ludolf. Ethiop. Hist. l. 2. c. 3. (e) Dampier's Voyages, vol. 2. p. 139.