He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost every thing. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall, and about birds and beasts and fishes.
No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on the hunter’s trappings, and went out with his arrows to bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then with his fishing apparatus he went down to the streams to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into the forest and found the rarest specimens of flowers. He then came back to his study and wrote books about zoology, the science of animals; about ichthyology, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science of birds; about botany, the science of plants.
Did any other city ever behold so wonderful a man?
His fame spread abroad, and Queen Balkis, away to the south, heard of it. She sent messengers with a few riddles that she would like to have Solomon solve and a few puzzles which she would like to have him find out.
She sent to King Solomon, among other things, a diamond with a hole so small that a needle would not penetrate it, asking him to thread that diamond. Solomon took a worm and put it at the opening in the diamond, and the worm crawled through, leaving the thread in the diamond.
This queen also sent a goblet to Solomon, asking him to fill it with water that did not pour from the sky, and that did not rush out from the earth. Immediately the wise man put a slave on the back of a swift horse and galloped him around and around the park until the horse was nigh exhausted, and from the perspiration of the horse the goblet was filled.
She also sent King Solomon five hundred boys in girls’ dress and five hundred girls in boys’ dress, wondering if he would be acute enough to find out the deception. Immediately Solomon, when he saw them wash their faces, knew from the way they applied the water it was all a cheat.
Queen Balkis was so pleased with the acuteness of Solomon that she said: “I will just go and see him.”
Yonder it comes—the cavalcade—horses and dromedaries, chariots and charioteers, jingling harness and clattering hoofs, and blazing shields, and flying ensigns, and clapping cymbals.