2 Chronicles 9
2 Chronicles 9 is the ninth chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles the Old Testament in the Christian Bible or of the second part of the Books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible. The book is compiled from older sources by an unknown person or group, designated by modern scholars as "the Chronicler", and had the final shape established in the late fifth or fourth century BCE. This chapter belongs to the section focusing on the kingship of Solomon. The focus of this chapter is Solomon's fame and wealth with the visit of the queen of Sheba and the list of his treasures, ending with the report of his death and the history books containing his activities.
Text
This chapter was originally written in the Hebrew language and is divided into 31 verses.Textual witnesses
Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text, which includes the Aleppo Codex and Codex Leningradensis, and Codex Alexandrinus.Old Testament references
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The queen of Sheba's visit (9:1–12)
The story of the Queen of Sheba's visit to Jerusalem was almost identical with that in 1 Kings 10 and fits extremely well for international recognition of Judah's rulers in the Chronicles.Verse 9
- "120 talents": a talent was about, so 120 talents weigh about 4.5 tons or 4 metric tons.
- "Queen of Sheba" : deduced 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.