by
Damien F. Mackey
Jesus Christ Gave Right Co-ordinates For The Queen
Following on from my recent:
How the Queen of Sheba may parallel Abimelech (Genesis)
according
to which the biblical “Queen” referred to in both the Old Testament (I Kings
10:1) and the New Testament (Matthew 12:42; Luke 11:31) was
Tamar, sister of Absalom, whose grandfather was Talmai king of southern Geshur
(Shur), I now want to show how Jesus gave most helpful co-ordinates enabling
for one to establish the Queen’s geographical location.
It turns out to be really quite simple.
“End
of the land”
As determined previously, the Greek tes ges (της γης) as given in both Matthew and Luke means “the
land”, the land of Israel.
Israel’s “end”, or border, was Dan in the
north and Beersheba in the south (hence, we often read: “from Dan to
Beersheba”).
Obviously only the southern border is
relevant here in the case of the:
“[Queen] of the South”
“The south” is a common biblical term for the
Negev.
So, we are directed to the chief town, Beersheba, that stands at the southern
border of the kingdom of Israel, in the (northern) Negev – and known as “the
Capital of the Negev”.
The Old Testament fully supports this, giving
the name of the Queen’s realm as “Sheba”, which is just another name for
Beersheba (Joshua 19:2): “… Beersheba (or Sheba) …”.
And,
given the ancient city’s strategic location
of intersecting trade routes, we ought not be surprised to read that the Queen
of (Beer)sheba travelled to Jerusalem with so richly-laden a camel train as she
did (I Kings 10:2, 10), and that: “Never again were
so many spices brought in as those the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon”.
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