The Queen of Sheba

The Queen of Sheba decided to go see for herself if 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 marvelous 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 them dry-cleaned. He showed her a dining-room table that could seat the whole State Department down to the last undersecretary's secretary, plus the gold plates he used when he wanted to put on the dog and the massive silver service he kept for when he wanted just a quiet evening at home with the family. When he took her to the place where he kept burnt offerings for Yahweh, she thought they'd wandered into the Chicago stockyards by mistake. 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 lady's maids apply cold compresses until the bell rang for supper. As the book of 1 Kings sums it up, "There was no more spirit in her" (1 Kings 10:5).

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, and the fifty of them or so who were present because they weren't pregnant at the time applauded politely. She said Yahweh must be tickled pink to have a king like Solomon on the payroll. Then she sat down, but not before making him a bread-and-butter 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.

Solomon responded by giving her so much in return that it made what she'd given him look like something she'd picked up at a tag sale, and when she got back to Sheba, it was some years before she ventured forth again.

1 Kings 10:1-13

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Questions

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, "What is the answer?" Then, after a long silence, "What is the question?" Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.

We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrowthe immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at workbut at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose, and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going. There is perhaps no stronger reason for reading the Bible than that somewhere among all those India-paper pages there awaits each reader whoever he is the one question which, though for years he may have been pretending not to hear it, is the central question of his own life. Here are a few of them:

 What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)

 Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4:9)

 If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

 What is truth? (John 18:38)

 How can a man be born when he is old? (John 3:4)

 What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:3)

 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? (Psalm 139:7)

 Who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:29)

 What shall I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 10:25)

When you hear the question that is your question, then you have already begun to hear much. Whether you can accept the Bible's answer or not, you have reached the point where at least you can begin to hear it too.

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking

QUIET

 An empty room is silent. A room where people are not speaking or moving is quiet. Silence is a given, quiet a gift. Silence is the absence of sound and quiet the stilling of sound. Silence can't be anything but silent. Quiet chooses to be silent. It holds its breath to listen. It waits and is still."In returning and rest you shall be saved," says God through the prophet Isaiah, "in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15). They are all parts of each other. We return to our deep strength and to the confidence that lies beneath all our misgiving. The quiet there, the rest, is beyond the reach of the world to disturb. It is how being saved sounds.

~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words  

QUIRINUS

 Saint Luke says that Jesus was born in the year "when Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2:2), although it is indicated elsewhere that at the same time Herod the Great was king. Since Quirinius wasn't governor until ten years or so after Herod was dead, the two dates can't really be reconciled, although for centuries scholars eager to defend scriptural accuracy in all things have knocked themselves out trying to reconcile them.So maybe Luke made a mistake. The inspiration of the Scriptures is no more undermined by the fact that their chronology isn't infallible than the inspiration of Shakespeare is undermined by the fact that he thought there was a seacoast in Bohemia.

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words  

RACHEL

 The life of Jacob's wife Rachel was never an easy one. In the first place, she had Laban for a father, and in the second place, she had Jacob for a husband. And then, of course, she also had her sister, Leah.Rachel was the younger and prettier of the two girls, and Laban told Jacob that if he worked hard for seven years for him, he could have her. So Jacob worked hard for seven years, but when the wedding night rolled around at last, Laban sneaked Leah in in Rachel's place, and it wasn't till Jacob got a good look at her the next morning that he realized he'd been had. Leah was a nice girl, but she had weak eyes, and Rachel was the one he'd lost his heart to anyway. Laban gave some kind of shaky explanation about how it was an old family custom for the oldest daughter to get married first no matter what, and Jacob had to work another seven years before Rachel was finally his in addition to Leah.To be married to two sisters simultaneously is seldom recommended even under the best of circumstances, and in this case it was a disaster. For a long time Rachel couldn't have babies, and Leah had four. When they weren't fighting with each other, they were fighting with Jacob, and when Jacob wasn't fending them off, he was trying to outcheat his crooked father-in-law, Laban, with the result that in the end the whole situation blew up, and Jacob cleared out with both his wives plus Laban's household gods, which Rachel pinched for luck just as they were leaving because luck was what she felt she was running out of. It wasn't long afterward that Rachel died on the road giving birth to a son whom she lived just long enough to name Benoni, which means "Son of my sorrow," although Jacob changed it to Benjamin later on.Even in death her problems weren't over. From her sons and Leah's the twelve tribes of Israel descended, and the whole story of the Old Testament is basically the story of how for years to come they were always getting into one awful mess after another with God, with their neighbors, and with themselves. Centuries later, when the Babylonians carried them off into exile, it was Jeremiah who said that even in her tomb she was grieving still. "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping," he said. "Rachel is weeping for her children" (Jeremiah 31:15).But Rachel's children were also God's children, according to Jeremiah, and the last words were God's too. "Is Ephraim my dear son?" God said, naming one of them to stand for them all. "Is he my darling child?" And then God answered his own question in a way that even to Rachel, with her terrible luck, must have brought some hope. "Therefore my heart yearns for him," God said, "and as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still" (Jeremiah 31:20).Genesis 29-31; 35

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words