Sunday Sermonette: International Trade

The visit of the Queen of Sheba is well known and no doubt features in the Bible stories for children genre. However, the legends that have grown up around her in the Jewish, Christian and Moslem traditions are all built from very sparse material. In this telling, we never learn her name, where the heck Sheba is, or what any of the profound wisdom was with which Solomon dazzled her. Not that it particularly matters, but scholars believe that Sheba may be based on Saba, a people of the southern Arabian peninsula. It is interesting that Solomon, along with the narrator, take the idea of a polity ruled by a woman completely in stride.As for the point of all this, and why it ' s in the Bible, at first glance it seems to be just more of the panegyric to Solomon and his kingdom. But if you look a bit more carefully you ' ll see that in return for all the booty she gives to Solomon, the queen gets whatever she asks for. (It isn ' t really specified although a possible implication is that it includes some of this almug wood, and no, nobody knows what species that is.) So this is really a trade mission, and some scholars believe that this is intended to promote Judah as a hub for trade with what is today the Arabian Gulf coast. That actually makes some sense given when and why this was written, especially as the remainder of the chapter also concerns trade with Egypt, Lebanon, and with " Ku ' e, " which is usually spelled Quwe and refers to a region in what is today southern Turkey; a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs