Did any other city ever behold so wonderful a man?
His fame spread abroad, and Queen Balkis, away to the south, heard of it. She sent messengers with a few riddles that she would like to have Solomon solve and a few puzzles which she would like to have him find out.
She sent to King Solomon, among other things, a diamond with a hole so small that a needle would not penetrate it, asking him to thread that diamond. Solomon took a worm and put it at the opening in the diamond, and the worm crawled through, leaving the thread in the diamond.
This queen also sent a goblet to Solomon, asking him to fill it with water that did not pour from the sky, and that did not rush out from the earth. Immediately the wise man put a slave on the back of a swift horse and galloped him around and around the park until the horse was nigh exhausted, and from the perspiration of the horse the goblet was filled.
She also sent King Solomon five hundred boys in girls’ dress and five hundred girls in boys’ dress, wondering if he would be acute enough to find out the deception. Immediately Solomon, when he saw them wash their faces, knew from the way they applied the water it was all a cheat.
Queen Balkis was so pleased with the acuteness of Solomon that she said: “I will just go and see him.”
Yonder it comes--the cavalcade--horses and dromedaries, chariots and charioteers, jingling harness and clattering hoofs, and blazing shields, and flying ensigns, and clapping cymbals.
The place is saturated with perfumes. She brings cinnamon, saffron, calamus, frankincense and all manner of sweet spices. As the retinue sweeps through the gate the armed guards inhale the aroma. “Halt!” cry the charioteers, as the wheels grind the gravel in front of the pillared portico of the king. Queen Balkis alights in an atmosphere bewitching with perfume. As the dromedaries are driven up to the king’s storehouses and the bundles of camphor are unloaded, and the cinnamon sacks and the boxes of spices are opened, the purveyors of the palace discovered, so the Bible relates: “Of spices, great abundance; neither was there any such spices as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.”
Well, my friends, you know that all theologians agree in making Solomon a type of Christ and making the Queen of Sheba a type of every truth seeker, and I take the responsibility of saying that all the spikenard, cassia and frankincense which the Queen of Sheba brought to King Solomon are mightily suggestive of the sweet spice of our holy religion.