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1 Kings 3 · a question people ask

Would the king really have divided the child?

In the text

The chapter doesn't say what the king intended, and this answer doesn't guess. It says what happened. The women had come with no witness: "There was no stranger with us in the house, just us two in the house" (3:18). The king said, "Get me a sword" (3:24), and "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other" (3:25). At that, the woman whose son it was spoke, "for her heart yearned over her son": "give her the living child, and in no way kill him!" (3:26). The other said, "He shall be neither mine nor yours. Divide him" (3:26). The king's answer was, "Give the first woman the living child, and definitely do not kill him. She is his mother" (3:27). The chapter's own word on it is that all Israel "saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice" (3:28).

The verses

“The third day after I delivered, this woman delivered also. We were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, just us two in the house.”
1 Kings 3:18 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of 1 Kings 3

1 Kings 3: A hearing heart

Solomon's "understanding heart" (3:9) is, in Hebrew, a hearing heart: the verb shama. It returns when he asks "to discern justice" (3:11) and when "All Israel heard" (3:28). And the verb of "discern" (3:9), bin, is the one behind the mother's "looked at him" (3:21).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions