1And Solomon became son-in-law to Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her to the City of David till he could finish building his house and the house of the LORD and the wall of Jerusalem all around. 2But the people were sacrificing on the high places, for a house had not been built for the LORD as yet in those days. 3And Solomon loved the LORD, going by the statutes of David his father, but on the high places he was sacrificing and burning incense. 4And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for it was a great high place—a thousand burnt offerings would Solomon offer up on that altar. 5In Gibeon did the LORD appear to Solomon in a night-dream, and God said, “Ask. What shall I give you?” 6And Solomon said, “You Yourself did great kindness with Your servant David my father, as he walked in Your presence in truth and in justice and in the heart’s rightness with You. And You kept for him this great kindness and gave him a son sitting on his throne to this day. 7And now, O LORD my God, You Yourself made Your servant king in place of my father when I was a young lad, not knowing how to lead into the fray. 8And Your servant was in the midst of Your people that You chose, a multitudinous people that could not be numbered and could not be counted for all its multitude. 9May You give Your servant an understanding heart to discern between good and evil. For who can judge this vast people of Yours?” 10And the thing was good in the eyes of the LORD that Solomon had asked for this thing. 11And God said to him, “Inasmuch as you have asked for this thing and you did not ask long life for yourself and did not ask wealth for yourself and did not ask for the life of your enemies, but you asked to discern and understand justice, 12look, I am doing according to your words. Look, I give you a wise and discerning heart, so that your like there will not have been before you, and after you none like you shall arise. 13And even what you did not ask I give to you—both wealth and honor, so that there will not have been any man like you among kings all your days. 14And if you go in My ways, to keep My statutes and My commands, as David your father went, I shall grant you length of days.” 15And Solomon awoke and, look, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant and offered up burnt offerings and prepared well-being sacrifices and made a feast for all his servants. 16Then two whore-women did come to the king and stood in his presence. 17And the one woman said, “I beseech you, my lord. I and this woman live in a single house, and I gave birth alongside her in the house. 18And it happened on the third day after I gave birth that this woman, too, gave birth, and we were together, no stranger was with us in the house, just the two of us in the house. 19And this woman’s son died during the night, as she had lain upon him. 20And she rose in the middle of the night and took my son from by me, your servant being asleep, and she laid him in her lap, and her dead son she laid in my lap. 21And I rose in the morning to nurse my son, and, look, he was dead, and when I examined him in the morning, look, he was not my son whom I had born.” 22And the other woman said, “No, for my son is the living one and your son is dead.” And the other said, “No, for your son is dead and my son is the living one.” And they spoke before the king. 23And the king said, “This one says, ‘This is my live son and your son is dead,’ and this one says, ‘No, for your son is dead and my son is the living one.’” 24And the king said, “Fetch me a sword.” And they brought a sword before the king. 25And the king said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to one and half to the other.” 26And the woman whose son was alive said to the king, for her compassion welled up for her son, and she said, “I beseech you, my lord, give her the living newborn but absolutely do not put him to death.” And the other was saying, “Neither mine nor yours shall he be. Cut him apart!” 27And the king spoke up and said, “Give her the living newborn, and absolutely do not put him to death. She is his mother.” 28And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had judged, and they held the king in awe, for they saw that God’s wisdom was within him to do justice.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. And Solomon became son-in-law to Pharaoh. The Hebrew verb, although it involves marriage, indicates an establishment of relationship between the groom and the father of the bride. The marriage is thus politically motivated and will be the first of many such unions for Solomon in his effort to consolidate the mini-empire created by his father.
took. This ordinary verb often has the force of “marry,” as here.
2. But the people were sacrificing on the high places. Since the Temple was not yet built, there was no alternative to these local altars on hilltops. But the notation reveals the unease of the Deuteronomist with a moment when both the people and Solomon himself offered sacrifices at sites other than the center of the cult in Jerusalem. The strong presence of the Deuteronomist and the shift that reveals itself in the subsequent passages to a different kind of narrative suggest that the book has now moved on from the David story to the work of very different writers.
3. Solomon loved the LORD. This is not said of David. There may be a play on Solomon’s other name, Jedidiah, which means friend, or lover (though different from the verb used here), of the LORD.
4. for it was a great high place. Evidently, the altar at Gibeon was much larger than the one Solomon had available in Jerusalem, hence his move to Gibeon to offer a huge sacrifice.
5. a night-dream. This is a lesser form of divine revelation, one even vouchsafed the pagan king Abimelech (Genesis 20). In the David story, God calls upon Nathan the prophet in a night-vision, but it is Nathan as intermediary who then goes to deliver the message to David (2 Samuel 7).
6. David my father . . . walked in Your presence in truth and in justice. The words assigned here to Solomon adopt the Deuteronomist’s revisionist portrait of David (see the comment on 2:3–4) as an exemplary servant of God. The actual representation of David gives us a much more mixed picture of the man with all his calculations of power and his weaknesses and moral failings.
7. not knowing how to lead into the fray. The account of Solomon’s reign does not represent him as a military leader combating surrounding nations, but in assuming the throne he does have dangerous enemies in the court who could have contested the succession.
9. May You give Your servant an understanding heart. Solomon’s legendary wisdom is here given a divine etiology: it is the one gift he asks of God, and it is granted.
vast. Elsewhere this term usually means “heavy.”
13. wealth and honor, so that there will not have been any man like you among kings. This statement, of course, is a fantastic exaggeration because the head of a small kingdom like Israel could scarcely compare with the monarchs who commanded the great empires to the east and the south. Solomon, quite unlike David, is manifestly woven out of the stuff of legend in this literary account.
16. Then two whore-woman. The introduction of the story with “then,” ʾaz, is unusual in Hebrew narrative. It clearly serves to mark a direct link with the preceding episode: the gift of wisdom that God has granted Solomon will now be exemplified in this tale.
stood in his presence. A primary function of the monarch, in the Bible and in the Ugaritic texts before it, is to administer justice, and so the two whores come before him to make their case against each other.
17. a single house . . . gave birth alongside her in the house. The repetition of “house” (which recurs still again twice in the next verse) both underlines the idea of their sharing quarters and reflects the style of this story, which abounds in symmetrical repetitions. It may not be coincidental that the larger narrative of Solomon begins (verse 1) by twice using the same word, “house.”
18. no stranger was with us. There are therefore no witnesses.
19. as she had lain upon him. There is thus a suggestion that the mother of the dead child may have been negligent, and at any rate she was inadvertently responsible for her infant’s death.
22. “No, for my son” . . . And the other said, “No, for your son.” This interechoing dialogue, heightened by the fact that neither woman is given a name, underscores the seeming undecidability of the case: each is saying exactly the same thing, so how can anyone know which one is lying? Solomon’s repetition of their words in the next verse amplifies this effect.
25. Cut the living child in two. This momentarily shocking decree, which then will be seen to be a manifestation of Solomon’s wisdom, is a clear expression of the fabulous or folktale character of the whole story. There is an approximate equivalent of the Judgment of Solomon in Indian literature that some scholars think may even have been its ultimate source, reaching ancient Israel through oral transmission. In any case, it sounds very much like a tale of surprising wisdom told among the people, or perhaps among many peoples, that was eventually attributed to Solomon.
26. Neither mine nor yours shall he be. Finally, the bewildering symmetry between the two women is shattered, and the false mother reveals herself.
Cut him apart. This plural imperative is a single word in the Hebrew, gezoru (“cut”), exposing the brutal lack of maternal feeling of the lying woman.
28. for they saw that God’s wisdom was within him. This concluding flourish confirms that God’s promise to Solomon of a discerning heart has been amply realized.