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The Queen of Sheba

An unnamed monarch who travels to Jerusalem to test Solomon 'with hard questions' after hearing of his fame, arriving with a camel caravan of spices, gold, and precious stones and leaving convinced the reports had not told her the half of it (1 Kings 10:1-13). ⚠ Her kingdom's location is genuinely disputed — most often placed in South Arabia (modern Yemen), the historic incense-trade kingdom of Saba, though Ethiopian tradition (the Kebra Nagast) claims her as its own and traces the Solomonic line of its emperors to a son she bore Solomon, Menelik I. Jesus calls her 'the queen of the SOUTH,' the direction rather than the name, and sets her alongside Nineveh as a Gentile who responded rightly to less evidence than stands in front of his own generation (Matthew 12:42; Luke 11:31). 'Sheba' also recurs among the names in Genesis' own Table of Nations, in more than one branch of the family tree (Genesis 10:7, 10:28) — whether any of those namesakes is the kingdom behind this queen is not something the text settles.

in the text 1 Kings 10:1 Matt 12:42
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