First Book of Kings 3

¹ Solomon allied himself by marriage with Pharaoh[*a] king of Egypt; he married Pharaoh’s daughter, and took her to the Citadel of David until he could complete the building of his palace and the Temple of Yahweh and the wall surrounding Jerusalem.

² The people, however, were still sacrificing on the high places, because at that time a dwelling place for the name of Yahweh had not yet been built.

³ Solomon loved Yahweh: he followed the precepts of David his father, except that he offered sacrifice and incense on the high places.

⁴ The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, since that was the greatest of the high places – Solomon offered a thousand holocausts on that altar.

⁵ At Gibeon Yahweh appeared in a dream to Solomon during the night. God said, ‘Ask what you would like me to give you’.

⁶ Solomon replied, ‘You showed great kindness to your servant David, my father, when he lived his life before you in faithfulness and justice and integrity of heart; you have continued this great kindness to him by allowing a son of his to sit on his throne today.

⁷ Now, Yahweh my God, you have made your servant king in succession to David my father. But I am a very young man, unskilled in leadership.

⁸ Your servant finds himself in the midst of this people of yours that you have chosen, a people so many its number cannot be counted or reckoned.

⁹ Give your servant a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil, for who could govern this people of yours that is so great?’

¹⁰ It pleased Yahweh that Solomon should have asked for this.

¹¹ ‘Since you have asked for this’ Yahweh said ‘and not asked for long life for yourself or riches or the lives of your enemies, but have asked for a discerning judgement for yourself,

¹² here and now I do what you ask. I give you a heart wise and shrewd as none before you has had and none will have after you.

¹³ What you have not asked I shall give you too: such riches and glory as no other king ever had.

¹⁴ And I will give you a long life, if you follow my ways, keeping my laws and commandments, as your father David followed them.’

¹⁵ Then Solomon awoke; it was a dream. He returned to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of Yahweh; he offered holocausts and communion sacrifices, and held a banquet for all his servants.

¹⁶ Then two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.

¹⁷ ‘If it please you, my lord,’ one of the women said ‘this woman and I live in the same house, and while she was in the house I gave birth to a child.

¹⁸ Now it happened on the third day after my delivery that this woman also gave birth to a child. We were alone together; there was no one else in the house with us; just the two of us in the house

¹⁹ Now one night this woman’s son died; she overlaid him.

²⁰ And in the middle of the night she got up and took my son from beside me while your servant was asleep; she put him to her breast and put her own dead son to mine.

²¹ When I got up to suckle my child, there he was, dead. But in the morning I looked at him carefully, and he was not the child I had borne at all.’

²² Then the other woman spoke. ‘That is not true! My son is the live one, yours is the dead one’; and the first retorted, ‘That is not true! Your son is the dead one, mine is the live one.’ And so they wrangled before the king.

²³ ‘This one says,’ the king observed ‘”My son is the one who is alive; your son is dead”, while the other says, “That is not true! Your son is the dead one, mine is the live one.”

²⁴ Bring me a sword’ said the king; and a sword was brought into the king’s presence.

²⁵ ‘Cut the living child in two,’ the king said ‘and give half to one, half to the other.’

²⁶ At this the woman who was the mother of the living child addressed the king, for she burned with pity for her son. ‘If it please you, my lord,’ she said ‘let them give her the child; only do not let them think of killing it!’ But the other said, ‘He shall belong to neither of us. Cut him up.’

²⁷ Then the king gave his decision. ‘Give the child to the first woman,’ he said ‘and do not kill him. She is his mother.’

²⁸ All Israel came to hear of the judgement the king had pronounced, and held the king in awe, recognising that he possessed divine wisdom for dispensing justice.