which overthrows this assertion, but because this sacrificial festival had no essential significance in relation to Solomon's reign.
Verses 16-26
Solomon's Judicial Wisdom. - As a proof that the Lord had bestowed upon Solomon unusual judicial wisdom, there is appended a decision of his in a very difficult case, in which Solomon had shown extraordinary intelligence. Two harlots living together in one house had each given birth to a child, and one of them had “overlaid” her child in the night while asleep (עליו שׁכבה אשׁר, because she had lain upon it), and had then placed her dead child in the other one's bosom and taken her living child away. When the other woman looked the next morning at the child lying in her bosom, she saw that it was not her own but the other woman's child, whereas the latter maintained the opposite. As they eventually referred the matter in dispute to the king, and each one declared that the living child was her own, the king ordered a sword to be brought, and the living child to be cut in two, and a half given to each. Then the mother of the living child, “because her bowels yearned upon her son,” i.e., her maternal love was excited, cried out, “Give her (the other) the living child, but do not slay it;” whereas the latter said, “It shall be neither mine nor thine, cut it in pieces.”
Verse 27
Solomon saw from this which was the mother of the living child, and handed it over to her.[1]
Verse 28
This judicial decision convinced all the people that Solomon was endowed with divine wisdom for the administration of justice.
Chap. 4
Verse 1
Solomon's Ministers of State. His Regal Splendour and Wisdom
1 Kings 4 contains a list of the chief ministers of state (1Ki 4:2-6), and of the twelve officers placed over the land (1Ki 4:7-20), which is inserted here to give an idea of the might and glory of
- ↑ Grotius observes on this: “The ἀγχίνοια of Solomon was shown by this to be very great. There is a certain similarity in the account of Ariopharnis, king of the Thracians, who, when three persons claimed to be the sons of the king of the Cimmerii, decided that he was the son who would not obey the command to cast javelins at his father's corpse. The account is given by Diodorus Siculus.”
