The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Chronicles — Section 115

]rnve felt constrained to be silent, or, if he spoke at all, to use the Iangnaar, of con rc~sion. 'l'hcre had been mnch grandeur bnt little godliness in his reign. Ancl°what had been tho proved value of it? 1. The delight it had ministered to him had been of a less noblo and less elevating kind, if not actually ignoble and injurious. 2. It bad led bis roind away from sources of joy which would have been far worthier in themselves and far more beneficial in their influence. 3. It ha.cl raised a standard of excellency before the eyes of his subjects which can have ha.cl no enlarging and elevating effect upon their minds. 4. It must have awakened the cupidity of surrounding sovereigns and the envy of many among his subjects. 5. It must have been in painful, not to say guilty, contrast with much poverty in many hundreds of Hebrew homes. 6. It entailed a heavy penalty on the people in the shape of burdensome taxes. Grandeur without godliness is a serious sin and a profound mistake. It is as guilty as it is foolish. And so we find the man who " I?assed all the kings of the earth" in wealth and in a certain order of wisdom (ver. 22), going down into fault and failure because he Jost that "fear of God" which he ought to have understood was "the beginning of wisdom." Unfaithfulness to the principles he learned in youth sent him down into his grave" prematurely old," his kingdom weakened, his character corrupted, his reputation bearing upon its face a dark and ineffaceable stain. How unspeakably preferable is- II. SIMPLICITY AND SACRED SERVICE. Rather than have grandeur without godli- ness, who would not live in obscurity with a name that does not travel beyond his "native hills," in a home unfamiliar with ivory and gold, living on homeliest fare and dressed in plainest raiment, with the love of the heavenly Father in the heart, the sense of his abiding favour in the soul, Christ's happy and holy service for the heritage of the life, and his nearer presence the promise of the future? Before honour is humility, before grandeur is godliness, before gold and silver is a noble and a useful life.-C. Vers.1-12.-Solomon's queenly visitor. I. HER JOURNEY To ,JERUSALEM. (Ver. 1.) 1. The country whence she came. Sheba. Not Meroe, or Ethiopia, as Josepaus (' Ant.,' viii. 6. 5), Grotius, and others say, following Abyssinian legend; but Saba.a, a country in Arabia Felix. Its capital Sahli., or Mariaba., still exists under the name Ma.rib, six days east of Sanaa. The district was extremely fertile, and a.bounded in frankincense, gold, and precious stones (Jer. vi. 20; Ezek. xxvii. 22; Isa. Ix. 6; Ps. Ix.xii. 15). Its inhabitants had become, through extensive commerce, among the most prosperous of Arabian tribes. The caravans of Sheba brought costly products to the markets of the world-to Tyre, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. (Job vi. 19; Ezek. xxvii. 22). That a high degree of civilization prevailed from an early period in South Arabia is attested, not only by the so-called Himarytic inscriptions found in that region, in which the name Sheba frequently occurs, but by the above-mentioned ruins of Ma.rib, which, according to Arab tradition, was destroyed, probably in the second century after Christ, by the bursting of a great dam in the upper part of the valley (Ritter). Arabian tradition, more commu- nicative than Scripture concerning this queen, names her Balkis, and makes her a wife of Solomon (Koran, ' Sur.,' 27). 2. The occasion of her }ourney. The fame of Solomon. In 1 Kings x. 1 the words, "concerning the Name of Jehovah," are added; but whether inserted by the author of Kings or omitted by the Chronicler cannot be determined. If the latter, they were probably intended to suggest that Solomon's fame rested chiefly on his temple-building for the Name of Jehovah (eh. vi.10), which showed him to be pre-eminently endowed with wisdom (eh. ii. 12). (For other explanations, see Exposition.) There is reason in the conjecture that Solomon's voyages to Ophir were, in part at least, the means of extending Solomon's fame and bringing it to the ears of the queen. 3. The object of her visit. "To prove Solomon with hard questions." It is hardly supposable that the queen simply aimed at a trial of wit between herself and Solomon in .propounding riddles, resolving enigmas, and untying word-puzzles, such as, according to Menander and Dius (Josephus, 'Ant.,' viii. 5. 3), Solomon once had with Hiram, and such as in ancient times formed a common pastime with _the A_r3:bs. The "hard questions" doubtless related to deep and important problems m religion and life. 'l'he serious words addressed by her to Solomon (vers. 7, 8) make this the most plausible hypothesis. Great, rich, cultured, and powerful as she was, she was obviously troubled at heart about tho solemn mystery of existence, and wisbcLl to have 116 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [on. 1x. 1-31,