First Book of Kings 10

¹ The fame of Solomon having reached the queen of Sheba… [*a] she came to test him with difficult questions.

² She brought immense riches to Jerusalem with her, camels laden with spices, great quantities of gold, and precious stones. On coming to Solomon, she opened her mind freely to him;

³ and Solomon had an answer for all her questions, not one of them was too obscure for the king to expound.

⁴ When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon, the palace he had built,

⁵ the food at his table, the accommodation for his officials, the organisation of his staff and the way they were dressed, his cup-bearers, and the holocausts he offered in the Temple of Yahweh, it left her breathless,

⁶ and she said to the king, ‘What I heard in my own country about you and your wisdom was true, then!

⁷ Until I came and saw it with my own eyes I could not believe what they told me, but clearly they told me less than half: for wisdom and prosperity you surpass the report I heard.

⁸ How happy your wives are! How happy are these servants of yours who wait on you always and hear your wisdom!

⁹ Blessed be Yahweh your God who has granted you his favour, setting you on the throne of Israel! Because of Yahweh’s everlasting love for Israel, he has made you king to deal out law and justice.’

¹⁰ And she presented the king with a hundred and twenty talents of gold and great quantities of spices and precious stones; no such wealth of spices ever came again as those given to King Solomon by the queen of Sheba.

¹¹ And the fleet of Hiram, which carried gold from Ophir, also brought great cargoes of almuggim wood and precious stones.

¹² The king made supports with the almuggim wood for the Temple of Yahweh and for the royal palace, and lyres and harps for the musicians; no more of this almuggim wood has since come or been seen to this day.

¹³ And King Solomon in his turn, presented the queen of Sheba with all she expressed a wish for, besides those presents he made her out of his royal bounty. Then she went home, she and her servants, to her own country.

¹⁴ The weight of gold coming to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold,

¹⁵ not counting what came in from merchants’ dues and traders’ profits, and from all the foreign kings and the governors of the country.

¹⁶ King Solomon made three hundred great shields of beaten gold, and plated each shield with six hundred shekels of gold;

¹⁷ also three hundred small shields of beaten gold, and plated each of these with three minas of gold; and he put them in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon.

¹⁸ The king also made a great ivory throne, and plated it with refined gold.

¹⁹ The throne had six steps, and bulls’ heads at the back of it, and arms at either side of the seat; two lions stood beside the arms,

²⁰ and twelve lions stood on either side of the six steps. No throne like this was ever made in any other kingdom.

²¹ All King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the furnishings in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; silver was thought little of in the time of Solomon.

²² And the king also had a fleet of Tarshish at sea with Hiram’s fleet, and once every three years the fleet of Tarshish would come back laden with gold and silver, ivory, apes and baboons.

²³ For riches and for wisdom King Solomon outdid all the kings of the earth.

²⁴ The whole world sought audience of Solomon to hear the wisdom God had implanted in his heart

²⁵ and each would bring his own present: gold vessels, silver vessels, robes, armour, spices, horses and mules; and this went on year after year.

²⁶ Solomon built up a force of chariots and horses; he had one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses; these he stationed in the chariot towns and near the king in Jerusalem.

²⁷ In Jerusalem the king made silver common as pebbles, and cedars plentiful as the sycamores of the Lowlands.

²⁸ Solomon’s horses were imported from Cilicia; the king’s agents took delivery of them from Cilicia at a fixed rate.

²⁹ A chariot was imported from Egypt for six hundred shekels, a horse for a hundred and fifty. These were exported through the king’s agents to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Aram in the same way.