I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 8-10.

King Solomon had married Pharaoh’s daughter.  Then rather than insist that she give up her idolatry, he built her a palace because he understood it would be wrong to have her live in the same palace where the Ark of the Covenant was housed for a period of time.  (Side note: nowhere does the Bible mention that the Ark was in David’s palace except here, I would interpret this to mean that it was kept on the grounds of David’s palace. )   Reading between the lines, this suggests to me that the writer is telling us that Pharoah’s daughter was practicing her idolatrous religious practices in the palace where she lived, and rather than make her stop, Solomon relocated her away from the center of Jerusalame.  This is the only hint of the idolatry which 1 Kings says led to the Northern Tribes revolting against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam.  The passage tells us that after doing so Solomon offered sacrifices on the altar he had built in front of the entrance to the Temple.  To a degree, Solomon was trying to have it both ways, worshiping God while taking part, even if only passively, in his wife’s religious practices.  Something we can take as a warning against marrying someone who does not share our religious convictions (although I do not believe that is any part of the writer’s intention).

From time to time I see people write about the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon as a romantic liaison.  There is nothing in the passage to lead us to that conclusion.  The only biblical basis for reaching such a conclusion is the fact that elsewhere we are told that King Solomon was a prolific womanizer (in 1 Kings we are told that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, which pretty much sounds like a womanizer to me).  However, I read the Queen of Sheba’s visit as a diplomatic/trade mission.  The account of the Queen of Sheba comes after the writer describes the trade routes King Solomon setup and before describing the great wealth he accumulated from that trade.  Sheba was a trade kingdom.  To me this seems as if the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon to figure out how he had developed such a large trade network in such a short time.