1 Kings 10
1 Kings 10 is the tenth chapter of the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible or the First Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is a compilation of various annals recording the acts of the kings of Israel and Judah by a Deuteronomic compiler in the seventh century BCE, with a supplement added in the sixth century BCE. This chapter belongs to the section focusing on the reign of Solomon over the unified kingdom of Judah and Israel. The focus of this chapter is the Solomon's achievements.
Text
This chapter was originally written in the Hebrew language and since the 16th century is divided into 29 verses.Textual witnesses
Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, Aleppo Codex, and Codex Leningradensis.There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus.
Old Testament references
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The visit of the Queen of Sheba (10:1–13)
Verse 10
- "120 talents": about 4 tons, or 4 metric tons. One talent was about 75 pounds or 34 kilograms.
- "Queen of Sheba" : deducted by most experts to be from an African kingdom centered around the ancient kingdoms of Nubia and Aksum, in present-day Ethiopia, which location name "Sheba" was quite well known in the classical world as Arabia Felix. Around the middle of the first millennium BCE, the Sabaeans were recorded to dwell in the Horn of Africa, the area that later became the realm of Aksum. In the New Testament Gospels, she was referred to as the "queen of the South", who "came from the uttermost parts of the earth", i.e. from the extremities of the then known world, to hear the wisdom of Solomon.
Solomon's wealth (10:14–29)
Everything around Solomon was literally layered in gold, such that silver 'was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon', against the warning in Deuteronomy 17:17 about not hoarding too much silver and gold. Solomon also profited from being an 'agent for the export of arms from Egypt to Syria and Asia Minor'.