One of the first poems that many of us learn at school is John Masefield's 'Cargoes'. It's even been set to music, the sort of music that school choirs are often asked to sing for the house music competition. It begins,
'Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
Of apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet white wine.'
Masefield was obviously drawing upon the Bible for these images of luxury and sumptuousness. It's the kind of poem that you can enjoy even if you haven't a clue what it's about - the words conjure images of beauty and splendour and exoticism. And it teaches a northerner's view of the beautiful south, warm and fragrant, exotic and sweet. It teaches us all to be lovers of the Orient, of the slightly forbidden pleasures of cultures so different from our own. Here are echoes of a thousand and one nights, of a sensuality that seems only to be touched under a sunfilled sky, of foreignness and otherness, of all that we might desire, of the mysteries of heaven.
It is these very qualities that make the story of the Queen of Sheba, to which Masefield's images bear some relation, so very popular. As Marina Warner suggests, she seems the most exotic, luxurious, sensual and exciting woman in the Bible. And Solomon, the great King she visited, seems the most glamorous man. It is certainly true that the passage we heard earlier wants us to know just how glamorous they both were. I suspect that however hard anyone tries to say that their encounter was a meeting of minds and a test of intellect, the many embellishing traditions from medieval legend to modern luxury cat food brands, will contradict them. Everyone knows that this meeting was about glamour and wealth and splendour. This was the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This was Yul Brynner and Gina Lolabrigida - just as in the 1959 film which sells the story as one of 'nights of love'. This was a breathtaking spectacle that would put Hollywood in the shade. It is hard to do better than to listen to a retelling of this story by the American Presbyterian novelist Frederick Buechner.
'The Queen of Sheba decided to go see for herself is King Solomon was all he was cracked up to be, and court etiquette being what it was, she didn't go empty handed. She brought enough camels to stock six zoos and gold and jewels enough to fill a dozen steamer trunks and so many spices that when the wind blew the wrong way, it almost knocked you off your feet. She also anointed herself from head to toe with Chanel no. 5, fastened on herself as many feathers , ribbons and diamonds as there were places to fasten them, and when she arrived in Jerusalem, it was like a Mardi Gras parade.
Since part of what Solomon was famous for was his skill at riddles, she brought a number of those along too. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And What goes up a chimney down but won't go down a chimney up? were among the easier ones, and the others were real shin-crackers. Solomon knocked them all off one right after another without even batting an eye and said it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He then offered to give her a guided tour of the palace.
He showed her wine cellars that made her feathers tremble with excitement and storerooms full of marvellous things to eat that had her mouth watering all over her upper diamonds. He showed her his personal wardrobe, remarking that most of it was last season's stuff, and the uniforms of all his butlers bodyguards, chambermaids and cupbearers, together with an estimate of what it cost per year just to have dry cleaned. He showed her a dining table that could seat the whole State department down to the last under-secretary's secretary, with gold plates and silver service. By the time they'd finished, the Queen was so undone that she had to excuse herself and go to her room, where she took off her girdle, put her feet up and had her maids apply cold compresses until the bell rang for supper. The Book of Kings sums it up, 'There was no more spirit in her'.
After supper she rallied enough to make a little speech. Seeing was believing she said, but she still thought her contact lenses must need readjustment. She'd heard plenty before she came, but she now knew she hadn't heard the half of it. She couldn't say which he was better at, cracking riddles or picking wives. She said God must be tickled pink to have a king like Solomon on the payroll. Then she sat down, but not before making him a present of as much of the gold and jewels and spices and camels as she thought she wouldn't be needing herself on the trip home.'
I suppose that, hearing the story, we're supposed to do just what Sheba did and be so overwhelmed with admiration and astonishment that we have to take a nap to get over it. The writer obviously wants to impress us and to tell us what a great chap Solomon was. This is one of whole series of stories designed to do just that. And of course it worked. Solomon is renowned still for his wisdom. Remember the story of the two women and the baby - it was Solomon, the wise judge, who found out which one was the true mother. Remember when God spoke to him in a dream and asked him what gifts he wanted for his kingship - and he asked for wisdom. Remember all those Proverbs, written by him or his admirers, students and imitators. He had a splendid court and a golden throne. He had hundreds of wives and hundreds of concubines, which is (perhaps astonishingly to our minds!) designed to impress. In his time Israel became cosmopolitan, glamorous and exotic. And, as the biblical scholar Fleming James wrote in 1939, Solomon
'…stands out in the Bible as the man who was most brilliantly successful in using God as the supplier of good things.'
But that comment on Solomon, as well as many of the stories about him, is surely double-edged. Many of the Biblical accounts of Solomon's reign tell us that what the Queen of Sheba saw wasn't all so great. He was famous for wisdom and wealth and glamour, but when it really came to it his wisdom ran into the sand. Things are not always what they seem. While the writer of the books of Kings wants us to believe that Solomon's wealth and splendour are evidence of his greatness, these same things can also be evidence of his foolishness. And as Solomon's story ends, the biblical accounts show us a kingdom torn in two and a man destroyed by his own foolish personal ambition. Solomon, even in his wisdom, did almost everything that prophets like Amos and Hosea later condemned. He took too much pride in his own achievements. He gathered about himself enormous wealth, all at the expense of his own people. He thought his wealth was given to him by God, but actually he got it through the enforced labour of the people and through stringent and crippling taxation. He left his country with huge debts that couldn't be paid. He also built temples to the gods of his many foreign wives and maybe even joined in the worship himself. In his desire to be cosmopolitan he forgot that the people of Israel were to be a peculiar people. For all his famous wisdom, Solomon actually provides a powerful picture of the foolishness of humankind, victim of his own vanity.
Solomon can't have had a happy childhood of course. His father was brow beaten into giving him the throne. His brother plotted against him. It's a wonder he turned out as well as he did. He became the first of the big spenders. Some recent excavations reveal that the biblical picture of the size of his stables was hardly an underestimate. His building programme was more than lavish and his harem was legendary. It seems he did manage to keep his country at peace and the story of the Queen of Sheba probably shows that he established some impressive trade links. But it was his people who picked up the tab. He bled them white with tolls and taxes. His wisdom was legendary, so much so that it reached the point that if anything clever was ever said it must have been Solomon who originally said it. But wisdom is more than riddles and PhDs and in most things that really mattered King Solomon was among the wisest fools who ever wore a crown. There are many among the biblical writers who would not want us to be impressed like the Queen of Sheba, but to be appalled that a King of Israel had gone the way of all the other nations. For some of them, even building the Temple was suspect - and for them a hillside shrine would have been just as holy and a good deal less ostentatious.
The Queen of Sheba was, by all accounts, impressed by what she saw. But even the Bible account suggests that what really impressed her was the riches and the glamour and the gold. It doesn't even bother to tell us what her clever questions were or even his clever answers. And perhaps if she was really impressed just by wealth and show, she wasn't quite so wonderful either. There are echoes here of fairy tales like Midas, where foolish kings are impressed by gold, or even perhaps of Lear, a foolish king impressed by the wrong kind of love.
What happens to the wisdom of Solomon in the New Testament? Jesus was a great wisdom teacher, loving stories and riddles and parables, and answering even the cleverest and trickiest questions with what sounds like true wisdom. John's Gospel even presents us with an image of Jesus as the true wisdom of God that was there at the very beginning of creation. But Jesus also recognised the foolishness of Solomon. He famously said,
'Consider the lilies of the fields; they do not work, neither do they spin; yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'
Jesus was impressed by the natural and fragile beauty of the created world and not by the splendour of worldly wealth and glory. What would Solomon or Sheba have made of Jesus' famous saying that 'it will be harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle'? Jesus was in many ways in the tradition of Solomon, as wise teacher, judge, and even King. But his Kingdom was never to be and never was a Kingdom of this world. His wisdom did not bring him wealth or fortune or the approval of Kings and Queens. But his wisdom stands still and is ours to claim.
The Queen of Sheba could hardly believe her eyes when she saw the splendour of Solomon's court. But there are more impressive things to see than worldly wealth. Mark tells us the story of Jesus healing a blind man. He couldn't believe his eyes either. He said 'I see people - they look like trees, but they are walking about'. Then Jesus laid hands on him a second time and he could see clearly. But Jesus brought more than literal sight. He brought his own remarkable vision of the world and wisdom won of his own closeness to God. Paul later wrote that what God did in Jesus Christ made even the wisest of human wisdom look like foolishness in comparison. It was not necessarily the kind of wisdom that impressed the impressionable. Otherwise they wouldn't have crucified him. But it was the closest to the wisdom of God we are ever likely to find. And for this great gift we can only turn to God in thankfulness.
Human quests for wisdom are littered with catastrophe and disaster. We all make terrible mistakes and misjudgements. We all get sidetracked and distracted by the unimportant and the irrelevant. We are all easily impressed by the unimpressive. We all mistake foolishness for wisdom. Jesus came to bring true wisdom, and it is there in his homely yet profound teaching and it is there in his living and in his dying. He never seems to have acquired more gold than that one wise man brought to his birth. He did not seek to build up treasure on earth, but in heaven. He dwelt more with the poor than with the rich. He wouldn't have impressed the Queen of Sheba. But Jesus knew how to see the true value in all things. He could turn the dust of everyday life into the golden presence of God and could touch any pain and transform it. Solomon was not all he seemed on that day when Sheba was so impressed. And Jesus was not all he seemed either. Within the humble human flesh was the presence of God, the wisdom of God, the spirit of God. Riches he heeded not, not the empty praise of anyone. But God and God alone was first in his heart, his treasure above all. And the old saying remains true for us, that 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also'.
Amen.
Copyright © 1998 Revd Dr Susan Durber
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