Did Solomon Want to Cut a Baby in Half? 1 Kings 3:16-28 | (un)ANSWERED

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In this episode of Unanswered, we'll be looking back at the times of the kings.

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The throne in Israel really began out of the sin of the people. The Lord God had told them that as long as they follow him, they would never need a king.

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He would go before them, he would guard them, and he would prosper them. The Lord warned the people that if they wanted a human king, this man would put taxes on them, would risk

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Israel's blessing of God, especially if he turned to other idols. Well, after the time of Saul, King David took the throne and God blessed him.

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However, his sin led to strife within his family and a pursuit to the successor's throne began.

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Solomon received the crown after David's reign, and at the beginning of Solomon's rule as king, he prayed to God.

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Let's go to it in 1 Kings chapter 3. It says this, Solomon said,

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So now, O Lord my God, you have made your slave king in place of my father

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David, yet I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in.

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And your slave is in the midst of your people which you have chosen, a numerous people who are too many to be numbered or counted.

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So give your slave a listening heart to judge your people, to discern between good and evil.

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For who is able to judge this glorious people of yours? This was Solomon's prayer to the

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Lord God Almighty. And it says immediately right after this that the

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Lord was greatly pleased in this kind of request of the king.

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It says so here, and it goes on to say in verse 12, This is the Lord speaking to Solomon, Behold, I have done according to your words.

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Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you rise after you.

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And so it was given to him, just as Solomon had requested of the Lord God Almighty.

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But it seems, almost immediately after God grants Solomon this great wisdom and discernment, it was put to the test.

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Our text in question today is 1 Kings chapter 3 verses 16 through 28.

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Let me give you the account of what has happened. You see, one role of a king was to act as judge over civil matters and make rulings for the people.

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Two harlot women were brought before King Solomon, and one woman, the first woman, describes her charge against the other woman and the situation that surrounds it.

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We see that the woman speaking had given birth in a home in which she shares only with this other woman.

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And it was not even three days later that that other woman also gave birth to a son.

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They each have baby boys. But she recounts to King Solomon that the other woman's baby died in the night.

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This woman negligently laid on her baby and killed him. And in the night, the middle of the night, this woman with the dead baby boy takes her son and replaces the living boy of the other woman, the first woman, and puts her son in her bosom, and then it says she takes the living boy and puts it in her bosom and she lays back down.

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And so this first woman giving the charge awakened from sleep to find the baby dead, but after examining his appearance, she realized it was not truly her son, that the other woman had actually taken her child.

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And so this woman charges this other woman before King Solomon, and the sinful woman says, no, the living one is my son and the dead one is your son.

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And the first woman said, no, for the dead one is your son and the living one is my son. And they spoke this before the king.

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Now this is very tricky. King Solomon, even in a calculating tone, repeats each woman's claim out loud.

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He knows the law. No matter how earnest the first woman seems, she could be lying and the other telling the truth.

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Or the second woman who is being charged with the child theft could be lying and this woman could be telling the truth.

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He doesn't know either way. And like any good judge, Solomon considers how she said no one else was in the house, but only the two of them.

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And in God's law, each person needs two to three independent lines of witness and testimony to establish their claims.

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Otherwise nothing can be done. But Solomon, he prayed for wisdom and he is wise.

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He knows this. He discerns an injustice has taken place here and he wants to rectify it.

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So he proceeds with one of the most radical and yet ingenious plans to determine the true mother of this baby boy.

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Let me read it to you in verses 24 through 27. It says, and the king said, give me a sword.

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So they brought a sword before the king. Then the king said, divide the living child in two and give half to the one and half to the other.

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Then the woman whose son was the living one spoke to the king for she was deeply stirred with compassion over her son and said,

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Oh my Lord, give her the living child and by no means put him to death.

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But the other said, he shall be neither mine nor yours. Divide him.

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Then the king said, give the first woman the living child and by no means put him to death.

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She is his mother. Now some of us have come across this verse, maybe while reading our yearly Bible plan or you're reading the

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Kings to your children at night and you think, why would Solomon propose such an idea?

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Would he really have intended to go through with cutting a baby boy in half? No doubt some people who don't understand the

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Bible would even think that this is downright barbaric. Now there are several things that I want to point out in the text that are very important.

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The first is that just like God stopping Abraham from sacrificing

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Isaac, God in all his omniscience and wisdom and foreordination would not let

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Abraham sacrifice Isaac. He knew Abraham had a true faith in him, the one true and living

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God. Similarly, Solomon knew God and he knew God didn't just give him wisdom to store in books to be unread.

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This is a wisdom that acts. This is a wisdom that makes things happen and it makes things right, to act with justice.

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You see, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge, to act with wisdom is to act in faith to God.

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Solomon knew that. God would bring clarity to this situation.

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Also secondly, Solomon, as kingly and as manly as he is, he knew the love, care, and nurture of a mother with her child.

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He heard of how his mother Bathsheba grieved terribly for his older brother who died at birth.

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He understood the love, Joshebed, Moses' mother, as she put her son in a tiny ark on the

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Nile River to be saved from Pharaoh's wicked decrees. He knew the longing

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Hannah had for a baby son so that she would dedicate Samuel to the work of the

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Lord in the temple even before he was conceived. She cared for him all through the nursing period.

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The Lord confirms this, especially in Isaiah 49, 15. It says, can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb?

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See, even God says a woman nurtures her child. And so he knows that if the sword was actually drawn from a sheath and raised above the body of that little boy, the real mother would cast herself between the blade of the sword and her baby.

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It's like, is water wet? Is the sky blue? This is something of certainty.

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A mother protects her child. The woman with no real connection to the baby was willing to see the first woman suffer just as she felt she suffered in her loss.

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Her loss led to envy, jealousy, theft, kidnapping, false witness, lying, and now even an advocate for death.

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Here's the third point. Solomon didn't have enough witnesses. He didn't.

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There was not two to three independent lines of witness. Only these two women lived in this household. And so he made himself and everyone else who was there witnesses to this woman's treachery.

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He had no evidence. And so Solomon produced his own. That is the main point for such a radical suggestion.

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But the first woman, she was the true mother. Solomon makes his official decree and judgment over this case.

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Give her the living child and by no means kill him. You see, real love sacrifices wants and desires for others.

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Real love considers others more highly than oneself. That's what this woman did.

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Real love is concerned for the life and well -being of others. It's incredible to think that a day would come when a righteous woman like Mary would give up her child, her baby boy, for people just like this wicked woman.

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That's one strong lesson that we see in this account. But the other lesson is revealed in the last verse.

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Verse 28 says this. Then all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had handed down, and they feared the king.

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For they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice. This was no whim of a madman.

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This was not an idea lobbed out there with hopes that it would actually work. This was supernatural wisdom.

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It was wisdom of God. That's what that phrase means. Why did Solomon do this?

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To administer righteous justice? How was he able to do this?

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With wisdom given by God. Should this be practiced by people like us often and with ease?

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Likely not. Can we deduce though some valuable principles and applications here that we ourselves could put into practice in how we judge matters?

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Most definitely. As far as the question, why did

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Solomon say to cut the baby in half goes, I think the true question we should be asking is, why aren't more of us asking for wisdom from God like Solomon did?

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That is another question for another time. Meanwhile, let's consider this one answered.