1 Kings 3:16-28--Solomon's Wisdom

1 Kings 3:16-28
English Standard Version

Solomon's Wisdom
16 Then two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. 17 The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. 18 Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house. 19 And this woman's son died in the night, because she lay on him. 20 And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. 21 When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning, behold, he was not the child that I had borne.” 22 But the other woman said, “No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours.” The first said, “No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.” Thus they spoke before the king.

​23 Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.’” 24 And the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So a sword was brought before the king. 25 And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” 26 Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.” 27 Then the king answered and said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother.” 28 And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.

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We may be familiar with this passage if we went to Sunday School and heard it as a child, or we may be familiar with the idiom that comes from it when people talk about the need "to split the baby," however, they typically use that idiom in a way that is inconsistent with the text.  The text does not tell us about Solomon facing a difficult situation where he can't make everyone happy, so he decides to make everyone a little happy and a little sad (that's usually what the idiom has come to mean), but instead he is faced with the impossible situation of needing to choose which woman was really the child's mother and should have custody of the child.  In today's day and age, it would be rather simple to just do a DNA test, but since that wasn't an option for Solomon, he had to put the women in a situation where one of them would act like the child's mother would by acting in a way that was sacrificial and selfless in order to save the life of her child while the other should act in a way consistent with the story and be completely self-centered and care nothing for raising the child or even its life.

How did Solomon accomplish this?  He offered to solve the issue of both having the same story, both having signs of recently given birth, and both making passionate arguments for why Solomon should find them to be the mother of the child by offering a compromise that shouldn't have been accepted by the real mother--to split the baby in half and give one half to each woman.  Don't miss the fact that the baby has to be killed in order for this to be accomplished.  The one who simply was coveting the child the other had when she lost her child was now happy that both of them were on equal standing to have lost a child, but the true mother of the child could not stand to see her child killed like this and said she would rather that the stranger raise her child than for her child to die like this.  Solomon knew immediately which woman was the true mother, and all of Israel heard about how he handled this difficult case and how the LORD had imparted great wisdom to the king in order to make just decisions.  In fact, the whole world will hear of this and people from far away will begin to come to Solomon to hear his wisdom.  If only he had realized when he was young what he realized when he was older--that wisdom is found in the Law of the LORD and those who want to be wise should study it, meditative on it and love it.  Those who despise the Law of the LORD and rebel against it are counted as fools by the LORD.  We'll learn more about this when we study the book of Proverbs.