The Visit of the Queen of Sheba

¹The queen of Sheba heard of Solomon's fame, and she traveled to Jerusalem to test him with difficult questions.

²She brought with her a large group of attendants, as well as camels loaded with spices, jewels, and a large amount of gold. When she and Solomon met, she asked him all the questions that she could think of.

³He answered them all; there was nothing too difficult for him to explain.

⁴The queen of Sheba heard Solomon's wisdom and saw the palace he had built.

⁵She saw the food that was served at his table, the living quarters for his officials, the organization of his palace staff and the uniforms they wore, the servants who waited on him at feasts, and the sacrifices he offered in the Temple. It left her breathless and amazed.

⁶She said to King Solomon, “What I heard in my own country about you and your wisdom is true!

⁷But I couldn't believe it until I had come and seen it all for myself. But I didn't hear even half of it; your wisdom and wealth are much greater than what I was told.

⁸How fortunate are your wives! And how fortunate your servants, who are always in your presence and are privileged to hear your wise sayings!

⁹Praise the Lord your God! He has shown how pleased he is with you by making you king of Israel. Because his love for Israel is eternal, he has made you their king so that you can maintain law and justice.”

¹⁰She presented to King Solomon the gifts she had brought: almost five tons of gold and a very large amount of spices and jewels. The amount of spices she gave him was by far the greatest that he ever received at any time.

¹¹(Hiram's fleet, which had brought gold from Ophir, also brought from there a large amount of juniper wood and jewels.

¹²Solomon used the wood to build railings in the Temple and the palace, and also to make harps and lyres for the musicians. It was the finest juniper wood ever imported into Israel; none like it has ever been seen again.)

¹³King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba everything she asked for, besides all the other customary gifts that he had generously given her. Then she and her attendants returned to the land of Sheba.

King Solomon's Wealth

¹⁴Every year King Solomon received over twenty-five tons of gold,

¹⁵in addition to the taxes paid by merchants, the profits from trade, and tribute paid by the Arabian kings and the governors of the Israelite districts.

¹⁶Solomon made two hundred large shields and had each one overlaid with almost fifteen pounds of gold.

¹⁷He also made three hundred smaller shields, overlaying each one of them with nearly four pounds of gold. He had all these shields placed in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon.

¹⁸He also had a large throne made. Part of it was covered with ivory and the rest of it was covered with the finest gold.

^19-20The throne had six steps leading up to it, with the figure of a lion at each end of every step, a total of twelve lions. At the back of the throne was the figure of a bull's head, and beside each of the two armrests was the figure of a lion. No throne like this had ever existed in any other kingdom.

²¹All of Solomon's drinking cups were made of gold, and all the utensils in the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. No silver was used, since it was not considered valuable in Solomon's day.

²²He had a fleet of ocean-going ships sailing with Hiram's fleet. Every three years his fleet would return, bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and monkeys.

²³King Solomon was richer and wiser than any other king,

²⁴and the whole world wanted to come and listen to the wisdom that God had given him.

²⁵Everyone who came brought him a gift—articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons, spices, horses, and mules. This continued year after year.

²⁶Solomon built up a force of fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand cavalry horses. Some of them he kept in Jerusalem and the rest he stationed in various other cities.

²⁷During his reign silver was as common in Jerusalem as stone, and cedar was as plentiful as ordinary sycamore in the foothills of Judah.

²⁸The king's agents controlled the export of horses from Musri and Cilicia,

²⁹and the export of chariots from Egypt. They supplied the Hittite and Syrian kings with horses and chariots, selling chariots for 600 pieces of silver each and horses for 150 each.

Thoughts about Life

¹A good reputation is better than expensive perfume; and the day you die is better than the day you are born.

²It is better to go to a home where there is mourning than to one where there is a party, because the living should always remind themselves that death is waiting for us all.

³Sorrow is better than laughter; it may sadden your face, but it sharpens your understanding.

⁴Someone who is always thinking about happiness is a fool. A wise person thinks about death.

⁵It is better to have wise people reprimand you than to have stupid people sing your praises.

⁶When a fool laughs, it is like thorns crackling in a fire. It doesn't mean a thing.

⁷You may be wise, but if you cheat someone, you are acting like a fool. If you take a bribe, you ruin your character.

⁸The end of something is better than its beginning. Patience is better than pride.

⁹Keep your temper under control; it is foolish to harbor a grudge.

¹⁰Never ask, “Oh, why were things so much better in the old days?” It's not an intelligent question.

¹¹Everyone who lives ought to be wise; it is as good as receiving an inheritance

¹²and will give you as much security as money can. Wisdom keeps you safe—this is the advantage of knowledge.

¹³Think about what God has done. How can anyone straighten out what God has made crooked?

¹⁴When things are going well for you, be glad, and when trouble comes, just remember: God sends both happiness and trouble; you never know what is going to happen next.

¹⁵My life has been useless, but in it I have seen everything. Some good people may die while others live on, even though they are evil.

¹⁶So don't be too good or too wise—why kill yourself

¹⁷But don't be too wicked or too foolish, either—why die before you have to?

¹⁸Avoid both extremes. If you have reverence for God, you will be successful anyway.

¹⁹Wisdom does more for a person than ten rulers can do for a city.

²⁰There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake.

²¹Don't pay attention to everything people say—you may hear your servant insulting you,

²²and you know yourself that you have insulted other people many times.

²³I used my wisdom to test all of this. I was determined to be wise, but it was beyond me.

²⁴How can anyone discover what life means? It is too deep for us, too hard to understand.

²⁵But I devoted myself to knowledge and study; I was determined to find wisdom and the answers to my questions, and to learn how wicked and foolish stupidity is.

²⁶I found something more bitter than death—the woman who is like a trap. The love she offers you will catch you like a net, and her arms around you will hold you like a chain. A man who pleases God can get away, but she will catch the sinner.

²⁷Yes, said the Philosopher, I found this out little by little while I was looking for answers.

²⁸I have looked for other answers but have found none. I found one man in a thousand that I could respect, but not one woman.

²⁹This is all that I have learned: God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated.

¹Only the wise know what things really mean. Wisdom makes them smile and makes their frowns disappear.

Obey the King

²Do what the king says, and don't make any rash promises to God.

³The king can do anything he likes, so depart from his presence; don't stay in such a dangerous place.

⁴The king acts with authority, and no one can challenge what he does.

⁵As long as you obey his commands, you are safe, and a wise person knows how and when to do it.

⁶There is a right time and a right way to do everything, but we know so little!

⁷None of us knows what is going to happen, and there is no one to tell us.

⁸No one can keep from dying or put off the day of death. That is a battle we cannot escape; we cannot cheat our way out.

The Wicked and the Righteous

⁹I saw all this when I thought about the things that are done in this world, a world where some people have power and others have to suffer under them.

¹⁰Yes, I have seen the wicked buried and in their graves, but on the way back from the cemetery people praise them in the very city where they did their evil. It is useless.

¹¹Why do people commit crimes so readily? Because crime is not punished quickly enough.

¹²A sinner may commit a hundred crimes and still live. Oh yes, I know what they say: “If you obey God, everything will be all right,

¹³but it will not go well for the wicked. Their life is like a shadow and they will die young, because they do not obey God.”

¹⁴But this is nonsense. Look at what happens in the world: sometimes the righteous get the punishment of the wicked, and the wicked get the reward of the righteous. I say it is useless.

¹⁵So I am convinced that we should enjoy ourselves, because the only pleasure we have in this life is eating and drinking and enjoying ourselves. We can at least do this as we labor during the life that God has given us in this world.

¹⁶Whenever I tried to become wise and learn what goes on in the world, I realized that you could stay awake night and day

¹⁷and never be able to understand what God is doing. However hard you try, you will never find out. The wise may claim to know, but they don't.

¹I thought long and hard about all this and saw that God controls the actions of wise and righteous people, even their love and their hate. No one knows anything about what lies ahead.

²It makes no difference. The same fate comes to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the bad, to those who are religious and those who are not, to those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. A good person is no better off than a sinner; one who takes an oath is no better off than one who does not.

³One fate comes to all alike, and this is as wrong as anything that happens in this world. As long as people live, their minds are full of evil and madness, and suddenly they die.

⁴But anyone who is alive in the world of the living has some hope; a live dog is better off than a dead lion.

⁵Yes, the living know they are going to die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward; they are completely forgotten.

⁶Their loves, their hates, their passions, all died with them. They will never again take part in anything that happens in this world.

⁷Go ahead—eat your food and be happy; drink your wine and be cheerful. It's all right with God.

⁸Always look happy and cheerful.

⁹Enjoy life with the one you love, as long as you live the useless life that God has given you in this world. Enjoy every useless day of it, because that is all you will get for all your trouble.

¹⁰Work hard at whatever you do, because there will be no action, no thought, no knowledge, no wisdom in the world of the dead—and that is where you are going.

¹¹I realized another thing, that in this world fast runners do not always win the races, and the brave do not always win the battles. The wise do not always earn a living, intelligent people do not always get rich, and capable people do not always rise to high positions. Bad luck happens to everyone.

¹²You never know when your time is coming. Like birds suddenly caught in a trap, like fish caught in a net, we are trapped at some evil moment when we least expect it.

Thoughts on Wisdom and Foolishness

¹³There is something else I saw, a good example of how wisdom is regarded in this world.

¹⁴There was a little town without many people in it. A powerful king attacked it. He surrounded it and prepared to break through the walls.

¹⁵Someone lived there who was poor, but so clever that he could have saved the town. But no one thought about him.

¹⁶I have always said that wisdom is better than strength, but no one thinks of the poor as wise or pays any attention to what they say.

¹⁷It is better to listen to the quiet words of someone wise than to the shouts of a ruler at a council of fools.

¹⁸Wisdom does more good than weapons, but one sinner can undo a lot of good.

God's Glory and Human Dignity

¹O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world! Your praise reaches up to the heavens;

²it is sung by children and babies. You are safe and secure from all your enemies; you stop anyone who opposes you.

³When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and the stars, which you set in their places—

⁴what are human beings, that you think of them; mere mortals, that you care for them?

⁵Yet you made them inferior only to yourself; you crowned them with glory and honor.

⁶You appointed them rulers over everything you made; you placed them over all creation:

⁷sheep and cattle, and the wild animals too;

⁸the birds and the fish and the creatures in the seas.

⁹O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world!