4th August 2002
I suppose it is not surprising that I should find the Queen of Sheba clicks with my brain this evening, we had her arrival at the 2nd wedding yesterday afternoon. That flourishing piece of music, full of spark and joyful exuberance, announced the bride’s arrival. The story in our first reading (1 Kings 10:1-13) probably owes more to legend than it does to direct history, but it may well be based in some historical events. The two books of Kings probably date from around the 6th century BC, something like 400 years after Solomon’s time, so they are hardly contemporary chronicles of events. The key thing for their author or editor is whether or not particular people did what was right in the sight of the Lord, that is whether or not they were faithful to the religious code.
In the book of Deuteronomy (17:16-17), the book which inspired the editor of I & II Kings, the king is explicitly to avoid acquiring 3 things. Those are horses from Egypt, many wives and he is ‘not to multiply for himself much silver and gold’. Solomon has all of these in abundance! And despite his wisdom, they become his down fall. He goes after other gods and the source of this is placed firmly at the seduction of foreign wives. So the story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit has added layers to it being written back from a later period’s reflections.
Sheba was probably supposed to be somewhere in Arabia. There is an inscription from the time of the Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser IV, that records tribute being paid from a queen who ruled Arabia. This though dates from around 732-731 BC and that is some 200 years or so after the time of Solomon. So while this may well be the source for the legend, it is also a mixing of traditions. The wealth of Sheba implies that is was a centre of trade and so what we may also have in this legend is the memory of a female led trade delegation. So a number of strands combine to create the legend the Queen of Sheba, a kind of period story.
The passage which formed our first reading comes in a section that glories in a golden age of Solomon’s rule, before his lusting got the better of him. This is harking back to how good things once were. Solomon gets off to a good start by choosing wisdom above riches and honour and is rewarded by being promised those as well. He shows his wisdom in the famous story of two prostitutes quarrelling over a baby, both claiming to be the child’s mother (I Kings 3:16-28). Solomon’s reply is to order the baby to be cut in two so that they can share him. This prompts the true mother to offer him to the other so that at least he may live, rather than see him die and in so doing proves her self-denying motherly love. Just as well the mother was well balanced and not suffering from a ‘if I can’t have him no one else can’ disorder! I’m sure there is a psychological name for it.
Now the play of images is heightened because wisdom is usually portrayed in female gender. It is ‘she’, so a visit from a wise queen who plays with riddles is a visit from wisdom which brings with it the wealth and honour that was also promised to Solomon for his wise choice. The air is also charged with a certain sexual chemistry too, the queen is after all a foreign beauty and Solomon has shown himself to be partial to just such delights!
Solomon’s wisdom is not immune from greed and greed is perhaps at the root of his down fall. He literally loses the plot because of it - be it greed for gold, greed for other possessions, or in its more sensual form of lust. The three things Deuteronomy warns against. Times of plenty can be times when wisdom has to struggle to survive. Things come easy and so we become blunted by good living. A form of social cancer creeps in that loses a sense of direction and we become self assured and over confident in our own brilliance. Perhaps Solomon also got drunk on some of the adulation.
There is a playful wisdom in wisdom herself being portrayed in a sensual form as a queen from a far away land like Sheba. There is a warning that wisdom is not something to be possessed, as if we could bottle it. If it is not constantly exercised and kept fit then it turns into something sinister. It needs a frame through which it can be shaped and held, through which it can shape and hold us. Otherwise other drives and desires take over and, as with the Queen of Sheba, we find that wisdom has gone home again.
© Ian Black 2002