Second Book of Chronicles 9

¹ The fame of Solomon having reached the queen of Sheba, she came to Jerusalem to test him with difficult questions. She came with immense riches, camels laden with spices, great quantities of gold and precious stones. On coming to Solomon, she opened her mind freely to him;

² and Solomon had an answer for all her questions, not one was too recondite for Solomon to expound.

³ When the queen of Sheba saw the wisdom of Solomon, the palace he had built,

⁴ the food at his table, the accommodation for his officials, the organisation of his staff and the way they were dressed, his cupbearers and the holocausts he offered in the Temple of Yahweh, it left her breathless,

⁵ and she said to the king, ‘What I heard in my own country about you and your wisdom was true, then!

⁶ Until I came and saw it with my own eyes I could not believe what they told me, but evidently what they told me was less than half the real extent of your wisdom; you surpass the report I heard.

⁷ How happy your wives are! How happy these servants of yours who wait on you always and hear your wisdom!

⁸ Blessed be Yahweh your God who has granted you his favour, setting you on his throne as king in the name of Yahweh your God. Because your God loves Israel and means to uphold him for ever, he has made you king over them to administer law and justice.’

⁹ And she presented the king with a hundred and twenty talents of gold and great quantities of spices and precious stones. There never were spices like those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

¹⁰ Similarly the servants of Huram and the servants of Solomon, who carried gold from Ophir, brought algummim wood and precious stones.

¹¹ Of the algummim wood the king made floorboards for the Temple of Yahweh and for the royal palace, and lyres and harps for the musicians; the like of them had never been seen before in the land of Judah.

¹² And King Solomon, in his turn, presented the queen of Sheba with everything she expressed any wish for, besides returning what she had brought to the king. Then she went home, she and her servants, to her own country.

¹³ The weight of gold coming to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold,

¹⁴ not counting the merchants dues that the import agents brought in; all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the country also brought gold and silver to Solomon.

¹⁵ King Solomon made two hundred great shields of beaten gold, and plated each shield with six hundred shekels of gold.

¹⁶ Also three hundred small shields of beaten gold, and plated each of these with three hundred shekels of gold; and he put them in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon.

¹⁷ The king also made a great ivory throne, and plated it with purest gold.

¹⁸ The throne had six steps, and at the back of it a lamb in gold, and arms at either side of the seat; two lions stood beside the arms,

¹⁹ and twelve lions stood on either side of the six steps. No throne like this was ever made in any other kingdom.

²⁰ 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.

²¹ And the king also had ships that went to Tarshish with Huram’s men, and once every three years the ships of Tarshish would come back laden with gold and silver, ivory, apes and baboons.

²² For riches and for wisdom King Solomon outdid all the kings of the earth.

²³ All the kings of the earth sought audience of Solomon to hear the wisdom God had implanted in his heart,

²⁴ and each would bring his own present: gold vessels, silver vessels, robes, armour, spices, horses and mules; and this went on year after year.

²⁵ Solomon had four thousand stalls for his horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horses; these he stationed in the chariot towns and near the king in Jerusalem.

²⁶ Solomon extended his power over all the kingdoms from the river to the land of the Philistines and the Egyptian border.

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

²⁸ Horses were imported for Solomon from Cilicia and all the other countries too.

²⁹ The rest of the history of Solomon, from first to last, is not all this recorded in the History of Nathan the prophet, in the Prophecy of Ahijah of Shiloh, and in the Vision of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat?

³⁰ Solomon reigned in Jerusalem for forty years over all Israel.

³¹ Then Solomon slept with his ancestors and was buried in the Citadel of David his father; his son Rehoboam succeeded him.