1 Kings 10:1-8

1 Kings 10:1-8

The world and the Church together are foreshown by this queen; all to whom ever the word, sight, name of Christ come within ken are warned by her example; while the king whose wisdom awoke such a rapturous feeling is the pale shadow of the wisdom which Christ among us is ever uttering.

I. The principle which makes this Oriental visit of barbaric splendour worth a Christian study is this, that the queen recognised the existence of a higher wisdom than filled as yet her daily life, and that she was laborious. With her, wealth given and received was but a background, only a means of obtaining higher things. She owned and she sought out wisdom, knowledge, learning, thought, as something of a different order, and infinitely more precious, plants, proverbs, music, songs, simple names, indeed, yet standing at the beginning of lines of knowledge which are dignified by greater names, and opening out before the eyes which were first lifted to them dreams and possibilities which were yet in the far distance.

II. We do not always understand what a distinction there is between the progressive and thoughtful and the careless, whose days, from sunrise to sunset, add nothing of wisdom to their hearts or of knowledge to their minds. Christ draws the greatest distinction between the one class and the other, between the inattentive listener to His words and the attentive one with infinitely less advantages.

III. Christians in the world, and thoughtful Christians among nominal ones, are like those very men whom the queen so envied. We stand about the throne of Christ. Happy are we if we know and realise our privileges.

Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College, p. 96.

References: 1 Kings 10:1-9 . Parker, vol. vii., p. 324. 1 Kings 10:1-25 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. v., p. 16. 1 Kings 10:7 . Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 283. 1 Kings 10:22 . Woodhouse, Good Words, 1877, p. 349.