Luke 11:31 → 1 Kings 10:1

"The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and now One greater than Solomon is here" (Luke 11:31). Jesus is not alluding to 1 Kings 10 - He is calling a witness out of it. The narrative supplies every element the saying needs: she "heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD" and travelled to test him with hard questions (10:1); she came from Sheba, the edge of the known world; "Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too difficult for the king to explain" (10:3); and having seen it she blessed Israel's God for setting him on the throne "to carry out justice and righteousness" (10:9). Her whole significance in Kings is that a Gentile monarch crossed a continent on a rumour and found the report inadequate to the reality: "Indeed, not even half was told to me. Your wisdom and prosperity have far exceeded the report I heard" (10:7). That verse is the saying's second verbal leg. In the Greek, Jesus' words and LXX 1 Kings 10:7 share wisdom (σοφία, G4678), hearing (ἀκούω, G191), the land or earth (γῆ, G1093) and the pointing word ἰδού (G2400): the queen's ἰδού over a report that fell short of Solomon is answered by Jesus' ἰδού over One greater than Solomon. The typological structure is not imposed on the text; Jesus states it. Solomon is the wise king in whom the nations' hope of justice was concentrated, to whose court the peoples came bearing tribute (1 Kings 10:23-25; Psalm 72:10-11), and the correspondence is escalated by Jesus' own comparative - πλεῖον Σολομῶνος ὧδε, "something greater than Solomon is here." Analogical correspondence, historicity, escalation, forward-pointing within the Solomon material itself, and retrospective interpretation supplied by Christ: the five marks hold, so Typology stands. So does Contrast, and it is the sharper edge. The queen travelled to the ends of the earth for wisdom she had only heard rumoured; this generation has Wisdom itself standing in the street and demands a sign. Her hunger will be the evidence against their satiety at the judgment. The savoring is in the direction of travel. She had to go; He has come. The One whose wisdom once had to be crossed a continent to hear now stands within earshot and asks only to be wanted - and the tragedy Jesus names is not that Israel could not reach Him but that He was near and they were not hungry.