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CHAPTER 2

A King, a Queen, and the Discourse Between: The Riddle of Midrash

King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and riddles are at the center of the midrashic drama that I examine in this chapter. The narrative addressed here probes the same issues that are at the heart of the story of Simon the Just and the Nazirite: the delineation of a self and its relation to midrash. Here, too, questions of otherness (internal and external) and Eros play a key role. The emphasis, however, is different. In the present story, rabbinic self-reflexivity is staged in the form of a riddling tale. The midrash reflects on itself via the discursive features of riddles and in relation to this tale’s two main characters.

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba are among the most famous couples of Western imagination, in the same league as Anthony and Cleopatra or Napoleon and Josephine. In this case too, Eros is composed of intellect and power. When the king and queen meet, the stakes are high, and they play a zero-sum game. This, at any rate, is the case for the rabbinic writers of the tale. The biblical account (which appears in 1 Kings 10:1–13; 2 Chron. 9:1–12) is short and enigmatic, perhaps concealing earlier traditions and certainly giving rise to later elaborations.¹ The text that is the focus of this chapter appears in midrash on Proverbs (Midrash Mishle), dating between the ninth and the eleventh century,² and tells the following tale:³

Another interpretation: “But where can wisdom be found?” (Job 28:12). This refers to the Queen of Sheba, who heard of Solomon’s wisdom. She said: I will go and see whether or not he is wise. From where [is the scriptural proof] that she had heard of Solomon’s wisdom? As it is said, “The Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame, through the name of the Lord, and she came to test him with riddles” (1 Kings 10:1).⁴ What are riddles? R. Jeremiah said: By means of proverbs.⁵

She said to him: Are you Solomon, about whom and whose wisdom I have heard?

He said to her: Yes.

She said to him: If I were to ask you one thing, would you answer me?

He replied to her: “For the Lord grants wisdom; knowledge and discernment are by His decree” (Prov. 2:6).

She said to him: Seven exit and nine enter, two pour and one drinks.

He said to her: Surely, seven days of menstruation exit and nine months of pregnancy enter, two breasts pour and the baby drinks.

She said to him: You are a great sage, but if I ask you another question, will you answer me?

He said to her: “For the Lord grants wisdom” (Prov. 2:6).

She said to him: What is [the case of] a woman who says to her son: Your father is my father, your grandfather is my husband, you are my son, and I am your sister?

He said to her: Surely, the daughters of Lot say to their sons: Your father is my father, your grandfather is my husband, you are my son, and I am your sister.

She performed yet another test in front of him. She brought before him boys and girls, all of the same appearance, all of the same height, all wearing the same clothing.

She said to him: Separate the males from the females.

He immediately signaled his eunuchs, who brought him parched grain and nuts. He began to distribute them. The boys, who were not ashamed, gathered them up in their clothing. The girls, who were ashamed, gathered them up in their kerchiefs.

He said to her: These are the males and those are the females.

She said to him: My son, you are a great sage.

She performed yet another test in front of him. She brought circumcised and uncircumcised before him, all of the same height and all wearing the same clothing.

She said to him: Separate the circumcised from the uncircumcised.

He immediately signaled to the high priest, and he opened the ark of the covenant. The circumcised among them bowed to half their height, and not only that but their faces were filled with the radiance of the Shekhinah. The uncircumcised among them immediately fell prostrate.

He said to her: These are circumcised and those are uncircumcised.

She said: From where do you know?

He said to her: From Balaam, is it not written, “Who beholds visions from the Almighty, [prostrate but with eyes unveiled]”? (Num. 24:4). Had he not fallen, he would not have seen anything. And if you do not wish to learn from Balaam, come learn from Job, for when his three friends came to comfort him, he said to them: “But I, like you, have a mind, and am not less than [lo nofel me] you” (Job 12:3). I do not fall like you.⁶

At that moment, she said to him: “I did not believe the reports until I came and saw with my own eyes that not even the half had been told me; your wisdom and wealth surpass the reports that I heard. How fortunate are your men, and how fortunate are these your courtiers who are always in attendance on you and can hear your wisdom! Praised be the Lord your God, Who delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel. It is because of the Lord’s everlasting love for Israel that He made you king to administer justice and righteousness.” (1 Kings 10:7–9)

The riddling tale involves two main actors—Solomon and the Queen of Sheba—and a distinct mode of communication between them: riddles. It also involves what Hillis Miller terms “possible selves.” According to him, characters that operate in narratives allow their addressees (readers or listeners) to “experiment with possible selves and to learn to take … place in the real world, to play … [a] part there.”⁷ Solomon, as we will see later on, is a prototypical rabbinical figure and as such he engages in midrash. The Queen of Sheba constitutes an “other,” in her gender and in her religion; her discursive weapon, riddles, are also “other.” The riddles thus serve as a possible discursive other holding up a mirror to the midrashic self. In Miller’s terms, the Queen of Sheba and her riddles are “possible selves.”

As is usual with rabbinic tales, this one comes to us devoid of its contexts. When (if ever) was the story performed? For which audience? We are unlikely ever to have answers to these questions or to others that would provide a framework for the tale. Today, however, we are well aware that context is a constructed, rather than a given, trait of cultural phenomena. While we cannot recover the contexts, we have at hand “co-texts” in the form of other relevant texts in relation to which the story can be read. In other words, the co-texts are a construct of a given reading practice. The co-textual space designates a field of meaning in which our text resides.⁸ This space broadens or limits possible meanings when we examine the way in which the riddles in the riddling tale function.

In my discussion of the tale of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, I will first address the rhetorical characteristic of this form of discourse, from an a-temporal (ahistorical) and a-cultural point of view, by positing the riddle’s rhetorical potential. I will continue this line of investigation by considering the diachronic aspect of this form of discourse, which will inform us of the place that the riddle occupies within Jewish culture. The salient question will be: Do models of riddling tales or riddles exist within the culture? I will also look at similar forms of discourse in neighboring cultures.

The co-textual environment, the “sound box” of the riddling story in Midrash Mishle, consists of other texts, three of which will be discussed here: the biblical story of the meeting of the two leaders; other traditions about the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon and their encounter; and traditions of riddles and riddling tales in the cultural environment of Midrash Mishle.

The Riddle

Riddles are a form of discursive other, in relationship to and against which the midrashic self is examined. By identifying the riddles as an other in rabbinic texts, I mean that they are discursively unusual and anomalous in the rabbinic corpus; if we identify a pivotal rabbinic self with the discourse of midrash, riddles are clearly situated outside that discursive center and can potentially serve as a vantage point from which the center is reflected upon. In order to understand the intense reflective quality that the riddles may hold in our text, we should briefly address the biblical and rabbinic models of riddles and elaborate on the rhetorical and cognitive aspects of the genre.

Riddles make rare appearances in rabbinic literature. In chapter 1 of Lamentations Rabbah, we find eleven riddling tales, which involve people of Jerusalem and Athenians. In the Targum sheni (second translation) of the Book of Esther (customarily dated to the seventh or eighth century CE), the Queen of Sheba poses three riddles to Solomon. In Lamentations Rabbah, the fourth riddle alone is articulated in a riddling situation proper.⁹ Going back to the Bible, a riddle is explicitly presented in Samson’s story¹⁰ (Judg. 14:12), and the accounts of the meeting between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10; 2 Chronicles 9) state that the queen posed him riddles but do not offer the riddles themselves. Some argue that various forms of discourse in the Bible in the wisdom literature, such as Psalms and Proverbs, are riddle-like (and may have originated from proper riddles) and that, while they have been transformed, they can still be identified.¹¹ The connections among the different forms of discourse are important; nonetheless, they should not blur the boundaries that differentiate them and that make them distinct genres.

In sum, the textual evidence shows that riddles in the Bible and in rabbinic tradition could have served as possible rhetorical models—although limited in scope—for the text in Midrash Mishle. Riddles in that model served in a situation of conflict, involving tensions of different kinds: intercultural tension (Jerusalem/Athens; foreign queen/king of Israel; Samson/the Philistines) and an erotic tension (Samson/Delilah; Queen of Sheba/Solomon).

Let us turn to the potential meaning embedded in the riddle as a genre. As we shall see, the riddle may carry seemingly contradictory qualities. For example, it may seem subversive and undermining, as well as reassuring and settling. It is its dual, even evasive, character that renders the riddle a powerful and uncanny other, against which midrash is measured here. The fact that riddles are part of a riddling tale intensifies their complexity since, as Roger Abrahams insightfully noted: “[R]iddles within stories seem so central to an understanding of all ‘true riddles’ for, in calling attention to themselves as wit-testing devices, the vocabulary of riddles is more fully, if reflexively, explored than in other descriptive enigmas.”¹²

The riddle comprises the riddle image and the solution to which the image refers. The relations between the descriptive elements in the first half of the riddle are confusing, in a way that postpones, or even blocks out, the identification of the referent.¹³ The surprising connections between the descriptive elements that point to a certain referent imply the possibility of alternative ways of categorization. For example, the answer to the riddle “what has blond hair and stands in the corner” is a broom (and not a person). The riddle thus mixes two supposedly distinct categories—human and nonhuman/animate or subject and object, by constructing an image that refers simultaneously to both categories. Both animate and non-animate, according to the riddle image, can be referred to in the same terms (“hair,” “standing”). The riddle image establishes an identity between categories that are usually opposed to or distinct from each other. Thus, the riddle shows users of the language that these classifications, insofar that they are reflected in language, are not unassailable.¹⁴ In this way, by demonstrating that conceptual categories should not be regarded as exclusive, the riddle undermines institutional order by which human beings classify the world. In other words, the riddle implies that cultural classifications are arbitrary, or, as Abrahams put it: “[R]iddles, in bringing together elements from different semantic domains bring those classes themselves and the whole idea of classification under question.”¹⁵ Riddles may be viewed as ambiguous elements that threaten the integrity of the system—as an aggressive form of discourse, a view that explains the ritual restrictions placed on it. Not surprisingly, as anthropological studies have shown, the boundaries of riddling games are marked and defined.¹⁶ Yet riddles also demonstrate the flexibility of a cultural system that has the ability to mediate between diverse, and even opposed, categories. Accordingly, riddles can create new categories in which to place the things to which the images refer—the solutions to the riddles—classifying them according to salient attributes that nevertheless might not previously have been seen as possible criteria for categorization.¹⁷ Since the ability to create categories is central to the cognitive aspects of adaptive learning, riddles are paradigmatic examples of the process by which this ability is acquired.¹⁸ In a similar fashion, it can be argued that riddles offer a concrete demonstration of the various ways in which things in the phenomenal world interrelate. In this, the riddle may be viewed as encapsulating the notion of culture as a unity of the diverse.¹⁹ A complementary view is that the riddle channels energy. That energy, which could be potentially harmful for the community and its values, finds its expression in a non-damaging, and even psychologically supportive, form. The riddle creates a world of conflict that is resolved within the framework of a game. The solution leaves unresolved, once the game is over, the actual social, cultural, and existential conflicts external to the riddle game.²⁰

As I mentioned earlier, the mixing of categories that riddles entail explains their subversive, nonconformative, and aggressive qualities. Yet, like the carnival, these very same qualities enable riddles to function as an outlet and diversion for these destructive forces, thus supporting the authority of the culture that produces them. Even so, for its poser, the riddle is unequivocally aggressive—he (or, as in the present case, she) gains power by sowing confusion while making use of the wit proper to this form. This aspect should not be overlooked in the analysis of riddles embedded in a riddling situation, where a riddler and an addressee are explicitly mentioned. In this case, the riddle is not directed at the readers, and they are not required to solve it. Rather, the riddle is embedded in another discourse, in a plot. It is a riddling tale. And the fact that the riddling situation is surrounded by a different form of discourse bears, as we shall see, other implications.

In ancient and modern cultures, both Jewish and non-Jewish, riddling is often associated with wedding rituals. A riddle in the midrashic discourse may thus evoke matrimony, intensifying a story’s erotic subtext—as is the case in the midrash about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.²¹ Why are riddles associated with weddings? It could be because the form itself is erotic: “It is structured to bring the separated together, to connect the disconnected.”²² From a more socially pragmatic perspective, riddles are presented at weddings, which join a couple and the members of their families. Posed, as they are, within the clear boundaries of a riddling game, they thus offer relief from the tensions that underlie the situation: the psychological, cultural, and economic tensions between the families, as well as the erotic tension between the couple.²³ Furthermore, weddings are the expression par excellence of kinship laws, laws that serve as the founding categories of social organization. Since riddles may imply that any act of categorization is arbitrary, the analogy between the riddle and the wedding framework in which it is performed suggests that kinship laws are arbitrary, too, just like other forms of social categorization. Hence the riddle provides an outlet for defiance of the very foundations of culture (kinship laws) but also mediates between this defiance and the forms of actual social organization.

Akin to the riddle, though different, is the wisdom question. Its solution is based on prior knowledge of the subject or of scripture.²⁴ Wisdom questions, too, are not prevalent in the Jewish tradition prior to Midrash Mishle. It is, however, worth mentioning the few instances in which they appear, which constitute an additional possible model for our midrashic text.

The Babylonian Talmud tells us of Rabbi Yehoshuʿa’s confrontation with sixty citizens of Athens, in which he offered irrefutable answers to their questions (bBekhorot 8b). In another place in the Talmud (bTamid 72b), we learn of a similar confrontation of wisdom questions between Alexander the Great and the elders of the Negev.²⁵ From a synchronic perspective, the organizing pattern of Pseudo–Ben Sira (roughly a contemporary of our text) is that of wisdom questions. The situation in which a man stands before a ruler and answers his questions is a predominant literary format in Arabic (and other Eastern) literature of the time. One such example occurs in the eleventh chapter of the fable cycle Kalila and Dimna, where a dialogue between a king and one of his sages advances the plot. The Kalila and Dimna cycle was translated from Pahlavi into Arabic in the eighth century (and into Persian in the tenth) and was known among the Jews.²⁶ It seems, therefore, that we cannot rule out the possibility that this Eastern dialogical fabula-model influenced the riddle dialogue in Midrash Mishle.²⁷

The Co-Texts

The Biblical Story

The story in Midrash Mishle is an elaboration of the biblical story, where we are told of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon (1 Kings 10:1–13; 2 Chron. 9:1–12).²⁸ The biblical story is obscure. The biblical text specifies a reason for the queen’s visit: “to test [Solomon] with riddles”; but the questions are not given in the Bible. What the Bible does provide is a detailed description of the wealth and grandeur of the two sovereigns and of the gifts that they exchange. This detailed catalog of riches, combined with the terse description of the actual meeting, produces a curious distribution of information regarding the facts of the visit. We are told that the queen “came to test him with [riddles]…. When she came to Solomon, she asked him all that she had in mind. Solomon had answers for all her questions” (1 Kings 10:1–3). After seeing Solomon’s wisdom, wealth, power, and the high regard in which he is held, the Bible says that “she was left breathless” (10:5). Something happened there, but what?

The midrashic story seeks to answer this question by filling in the gaps that are typical of biblical poetics.²⁹ For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that the story lies at a juncture between two central themes in the Bible’s account of Solomon’s character. On the one hand, he is portrayed as the wisest of men;³⁰ on the other hand, the Bible emphasizes Solomon’s fascination with foreign women. The price paid for this transgression was heavy: his kingdom was split, and his heirs ruled only Judah.

The Queen of Sheba is a foreign woman who comes to test Solomon’s wisdom. In this respect, the biblical episode in 1 Kings 10 presents Solomon as a wise man but also as one who is able to resist and overcome a foreign woman. The biblical narrative provides erotic hints in the description of the encounter (“she came to prove him … she came to Jerusalem … she came to Solomon”): the verb “to come” (ב-ו-א) frequently bears sexual connotations in the Bible.³¹ The narrative even creates a pseudo-matrimonial background by elaborating on the exchanged gifts as if they were a dowry, and possibly through the association between riddles and wedding ritual. It is therefore impossible, as the midrashic reading points out, to overlook the erotic tensions that arise in the story itself. Nor can one ignore the tensions underlined by the position of this episode in the sequence of events that outline Solomon’s character. Our story appears at a critical turning point of his biography. He has already attained an international reputation as a wise and powerful king, and he stands on the verge of his descent into pagan worship, succumbing to his foreign wives.

The biblical story is a necessary co-text for understanding the text in Midrash Mishle. It leads to an understanding of the riddling situation and of the riddles themselves, in view of the two central themes dominant in Solomon’s character: he is the wisest of men; yet he is a man (male) of notorious weaknesses. In addition, this co-text exposes the Queen of Sheba’s double role: she is a foreign potentate but also a foreign woman and thus, by implication, a potential future bride.³² The story in Midrash Mishle ends with the queen’s blessings, with her acknowledgment of Solomon’s greatness, and, above all, with her recognition of his God, Who made him king. The midrashic story omits the exchange of gifts. This omission may be explained in various ways: the gifts could be associated with a marriage, an implication that the midrashic narrative seems to want to avoid; or they might remind us of another of Solomon’s sins, that of amassing silver and gold. They could also be perceived as adding to the queen’s strength. On the face of it, the midrashic story supports the biblical declaration that the queen’s visit was a success. However, the midrashic story, through the riddling process, casts doubt on Solomon’s unequivocal victory.

Traditions of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon

The many traditions concerning the Queen of Sheba and Solomon—together and alone—are important underpinnings of the midrashic story. A talmudic passage of earlier composition than the midrash states: “Whoever says that the Queen of [malkat] Sheba was a woman is in error; the word malkat here means the kingdom of [malkhut] Sheba.”³³ Later, Kabbalah and seventeenth-century German Jewish folklore associate her with Lilith (a demon said to have been Adam’s first wife).³⁴ The two traditions seem quite different. The first depersonalizes the biblical encounter, transforming the foreign queen to a (de-feminized) political entity. The second transforms the biblical queen to a prototypical she-demon.³⁵ Both, however, may be rooted in or may be addressing postbiblical traditions in which the Queen of Sheba was perceived as a demon or as possessing demonic qualities.³⁶ Thus, the Talmud’s curious erasure of the queen may be responding to this very tradition—which surfaces later—and its possible negative ramifications regarding Solomon.

The Targum sheni describes the queen’s meeting with Solomon. It tells us how Solomon, famous throughout the world for his wealth and great wisdom, holds a banquet for the kings of the East and of the West. He also invites all the beasts, the spirits, and the demons, who dance before him. The wild cock of the woods does not attend. To atone for his rude absence, he tells the king about the place that he has just visited: a wonderful country with silver-paved streets and gardens watered from paradise, ruled by a woman. The cock suggests that Solomon summon the exotic queen. The king sends the wild cock to summon her, supplying him with an escort of birds who darken the skies of Qitor, the queen’s kingdom. Solomon also supplies the cock with a threatening letter, in which he informs her, among other things, that since his army is composed of spirits and demons, he can inflict upon her and her kingdom a grave disaster if she refuses his invitation. After sending a preliminary expedition of six thousand boys and girls who look alike and who are dressed uniformly (as in the third riddle in Midrash Mishle), she arrives in Jerusalem, where she finds Solomon sitting in a glass house. Since she mistakenly believes him to be sitting in water, she rolls up her dress. It is then that her hairy legs are revealed to Solomon. Addressing her, he says: “Thy beauty is that of women and your hair is that of men; hair is becoming of a man and disgraceful for a woman” (chapter 3). Ignoring his last comment, she presents him with three riddles, all of which he solves. She is taken to his palace, where she witnesses his wealth, hands him gifts, and receives what she asks for.³⁷

The queen’s hirsute legs are significant. They allude to her demonic nature—hairiness is a common attribute of witches in folklore.³⁸ Arabic traditions state explicitly that the Queen of Sheba is a daughter of demons. According to these traditions, the king’s advisers oppose his marrying the queen, since they know that she is a demon. Knowing this, they realize that she must have hairy legs. For Solomon, the queen’s hairy legs signal a reprehensible gender-crossing; in other traditions, she is explicitly demonic. Whether labeled “manlike” or a demon, she is clearly perceived as defying set categories.

The Quran (Sura 27, “The Ants”) places the Queen of Sheba’s visit in the context of Solomon’s summoning sun worshipers to his palace. They are brought there to meet the king, who is a prophet of Allah, so that they will come to believe in the true God. In this version, Solomon also receives the queen in a glass palace, which she mistakes for water. She tucks up her skirts, but there is no mention of her hairy legs. But Solomon’s ruse and the queen’s misapprehension display his superiority over her. Commentators on the Quranic story elaborate on this meeting of sovereigns, drawing on the biblical narrative, oral Jewish or Christian traditions, or, it seems likely, folk materials that circulated in Arab culture. Al-Tabari (839–923) adds to the Quran’s version that the djinns, fearing that Solomon intended to marry the Queen of Sheba, tell him about her hairy legs. After devising the glass-house trick and seeing that the accusation was valid, he orders the djinns to prepare a special depilatory ointment.³⁹ A later commentator, al-Thalabi (first half of the eleventh century), offers a different tale, according to which the Queen of Sheba is the only daughter of a king. When the king dies, there is strong opposition to her accession to the throne. She then marries the rival claimant. But on their wedding night, she cuts off his head and takes his place as ruler.⁴⁰

The Tales of Ben Sira presents one episode from the tale of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba: Solomon’s sitting in “water,” the rolling up of the dress, the exposure of the hairy legs, and the depilatory ointment (the last serving as the link to the subsequent episode in the Tales of Ben Sira).⁴¹ This version adds that Nebuchadnezzar is a descendant of Solomon, exemplifying the idea expressed in the verse: “Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee” (Isa. 49:17).⁴²

The Queen of Sheba is also well known in Christian traditions. Here, it is important to point out that even the allegorical interpretation of the story (that is, the meeting of the rulers) is based on another familiar allegorical model: the meeting is a unification of bride and groom. In this view, the king and queen may be perceived as analogous to Christ and the Church.⁴³ Christian traditions are perhaps less relevant to our study, since we are focusing on Midrash Mishle, which was probably redacted in a Muslim environment.

The Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon captured the imagination of many storytellers. The examples given here underline a few aspects shared by the different traditions that may have been circulating at the time of our text. The Queen of Sheba stands out as a demonic power embodying an erotic threat; the riddles are part of her arsenal. All the different traditions (excluding the Quran) have a strong erotic charge—whether explicit or implicit.

It is difficult to trace the origins of these stories. We have seen that the biblical text, too, conceals great tensions; in this sense, it could be a censored version of bawdier traditions, as well as an inspiring basis for later developments. The Targum sheni seems to disclose Arabic or Muslim influences, which may have been initially inspired by Jewish sources. However, the issue of source and influence is not essential to our discussion. The point to be made is that these traditions existed in the period of Midrash Mishle’s composition and that they perceived the Queen of Sheba to be a threatening force: erotic, chaotic, and possibly demonic. To this should be added that all the traditions include stories about the queen being an infidel whose meeting with Solomon underlines the superiority of the true religion that he represents.

Solomon is, of course, a prominent figure in Jewish and Arabic traditions. The Jewish tradition praises his wisdom (including esoteric knowledge), which excelled that of all the inhabitants of the East. Some rabbinic traditions, unlike the Bible, do not mention his esoteric wisdom and even provide a rational explanation for it by emphasizing his wisdom as a judge, which finds its expression in a series of trials (Tanḥuma Buber, Ḥuqqat 15). Similarly, his rabbinical wisdom is stressed, and he is credited with being the author of three books: Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. In addition to being the wisest of men, he is also the richest king, and his dominion stretches far. Unfortunately, his later days are very different from his bright promising beginning: “At first, Solomon reigned over the higher beings…. Afterward, he reigned over the lower…. And still later, he reigned only over his couch…. And finally, he reigned over his cane” (bSanhedrin 20b). Solomon is accused of having committed three sins: having too many wives, too many horses, and too much gold and silver. His attraction to women is stressed as the main reason for his downfall and for the future destruction of the Temple.⁴⁴ Solomon’s penchant for marrying foreign women is an issue over which three of the rabbis in the Palestinian Talmud disagree.⁴⁵ The lengthy debate indicates that this point in Solomon’s biography was considered by the rabbis to be highly problematic.

An additional theme—one central to the legends that surround Solomon’s figure—is his connections with the demonic world; it is stated that “before Solomon sinned, fearlessly he ruled even over male and female demons” (Pesikta deRav Kahana 5). A well-known story tells of Ashmedai, king of the demons, who took Solomon’s place after the king had captured him in quest of a magical worm needed for the building of the Temple.⁴⁶

Solomon’s contact with a demon or demons (which is implied in the Ashmedai story) is a dominant theme in Arabic traditions. These traditions that choose to emphasize the demonic aspects of the Queen of Sheba hold forth at length about Solomon’s dealings with the djinns. Thus we find in the Quran: “And unto Solomon [we gave] the wind, whereof the morning course was a month’s journey and the evening course a month’s journey, and [we gave him] certain of the djinn who worked before him by permission of his Lord” (Sura 34:12).⁴⁷

The redactor(s) of Midrash Mishle was thus familiar with traditions that associated Solomon with a few central themes: wisdom (including esoteric wisdom), wealth, contact with the demonic world, and, especially important for our discussion, love of women, particularly an excessive love of foreign women, which, at least according to the Jewish tradition, caused a personal and national calamity.

The riddling tale in Midrash Mishle is devoid of witchcraft or overt demonological contacts. It introduces Solomon’s wealth and wisdom. As stated, it seems at first to bail Solomon out, without his having been convicted of yielding to temptation or even revealing an erotic weakness; the Queen of Sheba returns to her country convinced of his greatness. Still, a close reading of the narrative will shed a different light on this course of events.

Riddling Tales

The riddling tale was a familiar type of narrative in Babylonia and Persia at the time of Midrash Mishle’s composition. That is not to say that it was not known and practiced elsewhere—most likely, it was. Our midrash resembles two types of riddling tales: one is the story of the princess who is unable to solve her suitor’s riddle and is therefore obliged to marry him; the other is the tale of Princess Turandot, who poses riddles to her suitors. The young man who succeeds in solving the riddles will win her hand; if he fails, he is put to death. After a succession of severed heads, the hero appears who meets the challenge.⁴⁸ The midrash clearly differs from this prototype in some respects. Nevertheless, since variants of the Turandot tale appear in Arabic story collections,⁴⁹ we should consider them as possible references. In both types, the princess marries her suitor; in the Turandot model, the erotic consummation is opposed to death.

As we have seen with other co-texts, the Queen of Sheba possesses an erotic force that is threatening, potentially destructive, and even lethal. Solomon solves the riddles and, in keeping with the prototypes, escapes the princess’s devastating power. According to the classic form, he should marry her—yet he does not. In this, the midrash adheres to the biblical text. While hardly devoid of erotic suggestions, and while hinting at a possible marriage, the Bible does not express this theme explicitly.⁵⁰ The riddling tale co-texts thus serve as a frame of meaning in one of two ways: they may cause the reader or auditor to sense the euphemistic nature of the midrashic story (and the biblical version, too); or, on the contrary, they may underline the uniqueness and greatness of Solomon, who, unlike the heroes of the model tales, does not require (sexual) consummation.

Our tale differs from these traditions in yet another crucial aspect: at the center of our narrative stands a mature queen—not a young princess—and she, rather than the male suitor, sets out on a voyage. This role reversal underlines the queen’s assertiveness—or rather, her male, princelike aspect is emphasized, an aspect suggested already by her hairy legs (as Solomon expresses it in the Targum sheni). This hairiness also signals her demonic nature. As mentioned earlier, the two references—hairiness and demonic qualities—are both expressions of the Queen of Sheba’s refusal to fulfill normative feminine requirements established in the Book of Proverbs and in Midrash Mishle:⁵¹ she breaks through the normative categories in a manner similar to the riddles she poses.

THE RIDDLING TALE—MIDRASH MISHLE 1:1

Let us turn now to the riddles themselves, to each individual riddle and to its place in the sequence of riddles that constitutes the narrative. The first riddle—“Seven exit and nine enter, two pour and one drinks”—expresses transformations between distinct categories, on two levels:

1. On the verbal level, it portrays a transition from the nonhuman (time) to the human (baby). The transition between the categories is carried out by the use of verbs, all of which are borrowed from the human (or animate) realm: exit, enter, pour, drink.⁵² The verbs, and the repetition of numbers, create initial confusion because they imply that the missing referents belong to the same semantic field of animate creatures. But the solution lies in the fact that they belong to different semantic areas—days, months, breasts, a baby.

2. On the level of content, the human being is described as a product of a process, the unfolding of an explicitly halakhically (legally) designated period, niddah, followed by pregnancy.

The Queen of Sheba presents Solomon with riddles whose discursive structure undermines cultural paradigms by suggesting alternative categorizations (animate/inanimate). She thus symbolizes an alternative order, which the co-texts highlight as anti-order, a threatening chaos. Furthermore, the first riddle, given the context in which it is uttered here, possibly alludes to the sexual act, just as the riddles customarily told at weddings do.⁵³ Yet those usually contain erotic hints and innocent solutions, a strategy that functions to ease erotic tensions. Here, in contrast, the solution of the first riddle, although not explicitly erotic, is nevertheless charged. The situation is seductive—the queen alludes to the opaque, chaotic, and dynamic sexual act. She speaks to Solomon in metaphoric language that, given the context in which it is uttered, bears sexual connotations (enter/exit; pour/drink). In the riddle, there are no subjects, only verbs, but the solution provides a subject for each action, thus segmenting, clarifying, and distinguishing them. Solomon’s solution is also an account of the physical processes that a woman undergoes from conception through breast-feeding. By being excluded (as a mature male) from the interaction to which the riddle alludes, Solomon is spared the direct threatening sexual power that it implies. His solution rejects the fluid, unbounded option offered by his royal visitor. She is a foreign woman and thus, given Solomon’s proclivities, a potential lover. But instead of responding to her overture, he is afforded the opportunity to translate lover into mother. The maternal aspect is seeded in the riddle itself, where it, too, signals trouble, for the infant depends on his mother’s nourishment to survive. This paradigmatic reliance of men on women alludes to the specific characters at hand. Solomon solves the riddle from the point of view allotted to him by the riddle itself: the nine months of pregnancy (in Hebrew, this period is literally called here “the months of the newly born”). Furthermore, in the first riddle, the Queen of Sheba describes a process of inclusion, the channeling of the multiple (seven, nine, two) into one, a human infant. The queen thus implicitly conveys to Solomon that the human being as a subject, conceived as a unified entity, is, in fact, a collection of fragments. The presentation of the process exposes the inadequacy and the illusion that lie in the concept of man as unified and coherent. The Queen of Sheba acts as a deconstructive force against the assumption—a patriarchic one at its base—that regards man (male) as a sovereign entity. At the onset of her confrontation with the man who is considered the wisest of all, she suggests that the subject is not as coherent as it may seem. Pregnancy and nursing break down the distinctions between self and other, subject and object.⁵⁴ Solomon, who answers her from the infant’s point of view, seems to silence the seductive tone initiated by the queen. He succeeds in solving the first riddle, avoiding a possible erotic trap set for him. However, by indicating the basic assumptions that enable categorization, his ostensible success is not sufficient to conceal the traces of doubt and disorder left by the queen, on what seemed to be the solid ground of cultural organization. These doubts stem precisely from the putative security into which Solomon is allowed to escape: the mother. The Queen of Sheba accepts his challenge and proceeds to deconstruct the maternal illusion: “She said to him: What is [the case of] a woman who says to her son: Your father is my father, your grandfather is my husband, you are my son and I am your sister?”

In the second riddle, the confusion of normative classifications takes place first and foremost on the thematic level: the violation of laws of taboo. These rules are considered basic social classifications, shared (with variations) by all cultures. Verbally, the riddle seems to be phrased redundantly. The queen could have asked a shorter question: “What is [the case of] a woman who says to her son: Your father is my father?” The confusing verbal surfeit defines this question as a riddle (had it been formulated simply, it would have been a wisdom question). The lengthy question emphasizes something else as well—the riddle contains a number of possible roles in which women serve in relation to men, such as daughter, sister, mother, and wife. The riddle thus creates analogies between these familiar units. These supposedly natural affinities, as exemplified in the riddle, are not necessarily distinguished from one another, and indeed—as in Lot’s case—they can be unified.⁵⁵ The riddle also ends in “I am your sister.” The term “sister” carries clear cultural connotations of a lover, derived from Song of Songs, where the phrase “my sister-bride” (aḥoti-kallah) is repeated.⁵⁶

In continuation of the first riddle, which shows man (the male) to be the product of differentiations, the second riddle shows these differentiations to be arbitrary, even though socially necessary. The first riddle also contains the option—which Solomon chooses—of perceiving the woman as a maternal figure. As we have already seen, this option underlines the infant’s dependence on his mother and undermines his sovereignty. The Queen of Sheba shrewdly hints that every woman can be a maternal figure, intimating the dependence of men on women (qua women). The second riddle suggests to Solomon that maternal status does not necessarily contradict a threatening sexual interaction. Hence, the refuge that Solomon sought to find in the solution to the first riddle is rendered insecure, and not just on account of the weakness that the mother-child relation indicates; the nonerotic relations of parent and child are due to social differentiation and do not guarantee full protection from intimidating erotic power, as in the case of Lot and his daughters.⁵⁷

The incest taboo inherently transforms the closest and most familiar to the furthest. By the same logic, it familiarizes the stranger (spouse). The strategy implemented by the riddle is similar, where an estrangement of the familiar concept of language and categorization takes place. The riddle offers, in return, a translation of this strangeness into something familiar.⁵⁸ Throughout the riddling process, Solomon engages in translating the strange and alien into something familiar. Yet the Queen of Sheba remains a foreign woman who returns to her place almost untransformed (except for her newly acquired recognition of Solomon’s wisdom and the greatness of his God). She does not undergo the same process as her own riddles.

The first two riddles are verbal in nature. The last two are practical, and they are also distinguished from the previous ones by being labeled “tests” (dugma; lit., “examples”). The transition from riddles to examples is a transition from hearsay to eyesight, and thus it picks up on the beginning of the riddling tale: the Queen of Sheba came to witness Solomon’s wisdom with her own eyes. In this stage of the tale, Solomon’s position becomes more prominent. Especially in the last riddle, he takes a more active role vis-à-vis the poser.

In the third riddle, the Queen of Sheba places homogeneous human bodies before him, among which he has to distinguish between males and females. This riddle presents confusion on the level of content, the blurring of a natural, biological distinction between males and females by an external erasure of differences. In contrast to the previous riddle, which pointed out a social categorization, the third riddle challenges what may seem to be a natural category: gender. But perhaps not, since Solomon’s solution depends on gendered behavioral differences. Did the “girls [females] who were ashamed” act according to an arbitrary social norm or instinctively? In other words, are gender distinctions restored, thus saving the social order by employing natural or artificial differentiations? Here, we must bear in mind that Midrash Mishle and the Book of Proverbs define clear gendered, behavioral norms and condemn those who violate them. Solomon’s stratagem depends on the normative system, which determines the required measure of feminine modesty. Furthermore, the riddle and its solution reinforce that normative system by presenting it as a natural one. However, the mere presentation of blurred boundaries between males and females (even though these boundaries are reinstated in the solution) suggests the possibility of gender equality and, by implication, an equality between the king and the queen. This may be especially true since the queen does not meet required feminine behavioral norms as they are depicted in the Book of Proverbs and Midrash Mishle as a whole. These norms serve as the basis for Solomon’s virtuoso solution. In solving the riddle, he uses his eunuchs, who may be considered a neutral (artificial) category. He thus strips all eroticism from the riddle (or rather, from its solution)—eroticism that might have emerged, for example, had he distributed the grain and nuts himself. The solution thus supports the presumption that behavioral differences between men and women correlate with their biological differences. In contrast to the first two riddles, which implicitly convey messages to (and about) Solomon concerning his vulnerability as a man facing a woman (the Queen of Sheba), this example shows a retreat from the queen’s initial aggression: it is no longer an attempt to determine superiority but only equality. The third riddle marks a turning point in yet another sense: the first riddle touched on the primordial, and the second riddle dealt with mythic resonances (the story of Lot’s daughters), whereas here the confrontation between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon is shifted to his home ground—temporally and geographically. The text may thus be implying that this is his only chance to win the game. The riddle also alludes to the dichotomy that the queen wishes to establish for her needs, between men (Solomon) and women (the Queen of Sheba). Furthermore, with her words “My son, you are a great sage,”⁵⁹ she sends Solomon back to the rhetorical thrust of the previous riddles: the emphasis on the dependence of the man on the woman and the intimidating sexual threat that is embedded in the feminine figure per se.

The last riddle revolves around differentiating between Jews and Gentiles. As with the previous riddle, the distinction is validated naturally and instinctively when the circumcised behave differently from the uncircumcised. The solution to the riddle also transforms the salient but hidden physical difference between Jewish and non-Jewish males (circumcision) into a visible physical feature of a distinctly metaphysical nature (“their faces were filled with the radiance of the Shekhinah”).⁶⁰ It carries on from the third riddle, which posits natural differences between males and females. Yet we should remember that the third riddle also questions the very notion of naturalness. Furthermore, we must examine the entire riddling process, starting from the level of the living (fetal) mass, through the mixed kinship group of the mature sexual identity in the sociocultural frame, up to the climactic test: the existential cognitive identity of Jew versus Gentile.