1 Kings 3:16-28
Solomon’s Wise Judgment
16 Now two women who were harlots came to the king, and stood before him. 17 And one woman said, “O my lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house; and I gave birth while she was in the house. 18 Then it happened, the third day after I had given birth, that this woman also gave birth. And we were together; no one was with us in the house, except the two of us in the house. 19 And this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. 20 So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from my side, while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. 21 And when I rose in the morning to nurse my son, there he was, dead. But when I had examined him in the morning, indeed, he was not my son whom I had borne.”
22 Then the other woman said, “No! But the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.”
And the first woman said, “No! But the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.”
Thus they spoke before the king.
23 And the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son, who lives, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! But your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’” 24 Then the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king. 25 And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to one, and half to the other.”
26 Then the woman whose son was living spoke to the king, for she yearned with compassion for her son; and she said, “O my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him!”
But the other said, “Let him be neither mine nor yours, but divide him.”
27 So the king answered and said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him; she is his mother.”
28 And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered; and they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice.
The account of king Solomon’s first case set before him still echoes down through time to touch our hearts and minds as we reread this passage about the wisdom of God for discernment and justice. The one woman lost her new baby when she rolled on top of him in her sleep, and then switched him for another’s newborn who was nearby. The thief contradicted the story the first woman presented before the court of the king’s judgment and tried to turn the story around to portray her as the wronged one. Solomon settled it with godly wisdom to reveal the true mother’s love for her child. He took a sword and was ready to cut the baby in half to give each a part of the child, not really intending to do so, but to reveal the truth of who was the one who gave life to the infant before him on the place of judgment. The true mother had such love for her child taken from her that she would rather let the other woman take him to save his life than allow him to die. The pretender thief had no such compassion and told the king to go ahead with the plan to divide up the child since it was not really hers as she falsely claimed. Solomon used this wise approach to reveal the baby had been indeed stolen and he returned him to the loving mother who was ready to give him up to save his life. This is not a picture of Christ as the Son of God per se, but it does evoke consideration that the Father was willing to actually have us kill His Son on the cross of sacrifice to save us in his compassion for we the children of the Lord. Either way, from this account we see that the wisdom of God is required for sound judgment and discernment (John 7:24, 1 Corinthians 6:5, Hebrews 5:14, Philippians 1:9) of right and wrong.
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