The Heart of Wisdom -- 1 Kings 3 (9th Sunday After Pentecost)

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Introduction to the scripture: Our first scripture reading was the story of how the young King Solomon asks for wisdom – for a discerning heart – and how that pleases God. Our second scripture picks up right after that and offers a story intended to offer an example of King Solomon exercising that wisdom. It’s a well-known story. If you grew up in the church, maybe you remember it from Sunday School: Two women come before Solomon, each laying claim to one child. And Solomon has to decide. It’s a classic courtroom scene – a complaint, a response, testimony, and a verdict.

And ohhh – it’s rough. I have to admit, when I put this courtroom scene in this series, I had a Sunday School memory of it. But reading it as an adult – It is tragic; there’s tragic loss; and then in the midst of it there’s the potential for terrifying violence. It’s a challenging Scripture.

Now, we could shy away from difficult texts like this, and never read them in church or talk about them. Or, we can approach them from time to time, aware, and together – and take up their challenge – and see if we can find some wisdom, some grace, even here.

One note at the outset. The Scripture begins, “Later, two women who were prostitutes came before the King...” I’m going to invite us – on this first reading, to set the prostitute part over here, for a moment. We will come back to that, I promise. But as we hear this scripture fresh, I invite us to see these two women as women.

Scripture Reading –  1 Kings 3:16-28

Can you believe we taught that to kids in Sunday School? Such heartbreaking loss. And then, in the midst of that loss, Solomon says, “Bring me a sword!” – and a second child’s life is in danger. I’m surprised I didn’t have Sunday-School nightmares. I mean, Where’s the wisdom here?

Let’s use our tools to unpack this. Remember, we’re looking at this as a courtroom scene, and we know how they go: there’s (1) a complaint, (2) a response, (3) testimony, and then (4) a verdict that becomes (5) the operative reality for those involved. The interesting thing about each story is how those elements vary and are distinct.

This story dives right in with testimony. Two women are living together in a house. On their own. There’s no one else around for support. They each give birth, 3 days apart. And then, one night the unimaginable happens. One of the babies dies. The woman bringing the case to Solomon – called “the first woman” – lays out that background. And then the “first woman” says “the other woman” is the one whose baby has died, and that in the night, the other woman has swapped out the children. But when the first woman wakes up, she knows that the baby in her bed is not her son.

And so the first woman comes to King Solomon, brings her claim, and testifies: “The living baby is mine.” And the other woman testifies: “No, the living baby is mine.” That’s it. That’s the testimony. They are at an impasse. And Solomon has to decide.

Now, Solomon’s method for reaching his verdict is... unconventional. Solomon calls for a sword, and says that he will give each woman half of the child. He proposes cutting the living baby in half. And that gets to the heart of the matter. The woman whose child it was –feels deep compassion – it’s that Hebrew word for gut-compassion that wells up with love and forgiveness,[1] and she says, “No, no – spare the child, and give it to her.” Solomon gives his verdict, “That’s the child’s mother. Give the child to her.”

Now there is a traditional reading of this Scripture that says: This is an example of the wisdom of Solomon.[2] And there’s certainly support for that in the text. Notice a couple things:

First, notice how remarkable it is that these two women are speaking to the king in the first place. By all accounts, they are on the very bottom rungs of the ladders of power.[3]They live in a patriarchal world, and they are women. They are alone in the world – with no man in sight who would have a sturdier place in the hierarchy. They have no relationship with the king – which is one way a woman might have access to power.[4] And yet hear they are —with the king listening.

Second, they are at an impasse,[5] and look how Solomon gets right to the heart of the matter. His wisdom is that a simple – but harrowing –  test will separate the mother from the one who is not the mother. And so he calls for a sword. And the mother of the living child responds. One woman says, “No, spare the child’s life.” The other says, “Go ahead.”

Third, look what rises to the top – compassion. It’s ultimately a woman’s compassion that sorts this out. She feels deep in her being... compassion and love for the child – as we would expect a mother too.

And, in this reading that says “this shows how Solomon is wise,” there is the fact that the text says as much. Solomon asks for a discerning heart, this courtroom scene happens, and then the people confirm Solomon’s wisdom in their reaction – as it’s translated here: The people “stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him.”

This... is how Solomon is wise.

Or is it?

There’s another way to look at this text. When we were talking about the Scripture in our worship team meeting, Rev. Grace Hyeryung Kim offered a different take on this Scripture, using a womanist approach that she learned from Professor Yolanda Norton. Womanist theology is the gift to the church from Black women scholars, who look at Scripture and center the lived experience of Black women and other marginalized women, other marginalized people. They read the text from there; they center the margins.

Rev. Grace pointed out that the two women in this story are about as marginalized as they could be.[6] They are women living in a patriarchal society, on their own, with no male source of power in the system. And remember the story begins by identifying them not only as women, but as prostitutes – sex workers. And now, let’s say something about that.

We’re dealing with an ancient text, that speaks out from a particular patriarchal culture. In their world, sex-work is at times forbidden, at times tolerated as it is convenient for the males, and for the ritual structures that support the patriarchy.[7] These two women might also have been enslaved – they could have been women taken as plunder in war and pressed into this work.[8] Whatever the specific circumstance, the systems they live in presume male control of female bodies. These are women on the far margins of power.

So here they are before the king. I said earlier, the King listens. But does he? Biblical scholar Choon-Leong Seow points out all the things Solomon doesn’t do. Solomon doesn’t ask any questions. He doesn’t engage the women or their story. He seems to take “the first woman’s” story as true – but there are some holes in it – she slept through the babies being switched. There’s more here to this story – we know it – but Solomon doesn’t seem to care.

Instead of engaging the women and their stories, Solomon calls for a sword. One child has died. Solomon calls for a sword, threatening to kill one more child. In response to these pleas from these women on the margins of power – who already know violence – Solomon calls for a sword, the same kind of weaponry that has created and sustained this violent system in the first place. And haven’t you ever wondered? Solomon’s so-called wise solution is to call for a sword and to order that a baby be cut in two.  Haven’t you ever wondered, Is that really wisdom? Or just cruel.

But I know, I know, the text says, the people were in “awe.”  Well as Professor Seow points out, that Hebrew word for “awe,” is also the word we translate as "fear."[9] We could just as easily translate that: The people feared Solomon’s face when they saw Solomon’s ... wisdom. Is that what this is all about? Putting the fear of Solomon into folks.

So is Solomon wise or unwise?

Is he a king wise above all others,

or is he a king just like all the others?

These are two very different readings of this text. But look at what they share in common. At their heart, these two readings both value these two women being seen and heard, fully.

1.   The reading that says that Solomon is wise... it’s because he sees beyond the facts here, beyond the dispute here – he senses that what will reveal truth here is a test the elicits love and compassion.

2.   The reading that says he is unwise... it says that Solomon does not see broadly enough, doesn’t listen deeply enough. He doesn’t see the systems in which these women’s lives are embedded, his own role in that system, and he doesn’t seem one bit curious about what the women have to say about their lived experience of all that. He calls for a sword.

I’ve shared before my working understanding of what wisdom is: Wisdom is ways of living that lead to more life. A couple of years ago, we did a whole sermon series on that. I think finding those ways of living that lead to more life is on the Top 10 lists of why we come to church.

David Brooks – journalist, writer, and commentator you may have seen on PBS – has written a book that I’ve mentioned before: How to Know a Person – The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.[10] (I particularly love that subtitle). He speaks of wisdom in terms of relationship – how we live life together. He says this: “Wisdom is the ability to see deeply into who people are and how they should move in the complex situations of life.”[11]

For Brooks, wisdom is all about listening deeply, seeing others deeply, and being deeply seen. It’s about giving people space to tell their stories; it’s about accompanying people through the particularities of their lives; it’s about seeing people whole. Wisdom is a personal way of knowing, as Brooks says, “the kind of knowledge that is earned only by those willing to take emotional risks, to open themselves up to people and experiences and to fully feel what those people and experiences are about.”[12] Wisdom isn’t so much a trait, as it is a skill cultivated in relationship, in real life. Wisdom embraces “the ability to see the connection between things,... the ability to hold opposite truths, contradictions, in tension, without wrestling to impose order.”[13] Wise people, Brooks says, don’t rush in to tell us what to do; they start by witnessing our story, by probing what is really happening, by seeing us whole.

In this morning’s Scriptures, God is pleased when Solomon asks for wisdom. God is pleased because instead of asking for more power over, or for the death of enemies – Solomon asks for a discerning heart. A heart that can sift right from wrong, a heart that seeks and finds those ways of living that lead to more life. Wisdom is God’s gift to Solomon and to us of human agency – agency to stand in the midst of a bewildering world and make meaning of it – of seeing deeply, and listening deeply, and sorting through it all for the ways that lead to life.

What would Solomon have seen if he’d listened a little more deeply to what these women had to say – to their testimony? We’ve said already – these two women are living on the margins of power and community. And they are surviving together – perhaps even thriving. They share a house – without the help or support of a man. That’s no small thing in a world swirling with patriarchy. Each of them has given birth – three days apart. Living on their own, I wonder if they midwifed each other. I wonder what their life together was like – their friendship –before this moment when we meet them in their experience of trauma.

These two women – both mothers – are both grieving deep loss. One of them has experienced the death of her son. One of them has suffered the theft of her son. And, in whatever happened that night, they have together experienced the breach of the one relationship that has sustaining them in this world. These two women – in their trauma – have been torn apart.

And look at their courage. In their deep grieving, these women, on the lowest rungs of patriarchy, they come before the king and have the temerity to suppose that their trauma deserves the king’s attention and judgment.

And the king calls for a sword. He says let’s kill the child and give each woman half. When Solomon does that – I’d love to ask the one woman why she says, “Go ahead do it.” I think in Sunday School, we probably assumed the worst motives – she was the one who wasn’t the mother – she must be doing this out of spite. That is so not fair. Did she do it because she was raging with grief? Or, maybe, does she say that because she has the nerve to call Solomon’s bluff? In a way, Solomon does what power does – he goes to solve this problem with a sword. And what he proposes is absurd – that’s an essential part of the story – the absurdity – how crazy to divide the living child. Does she say, “Go ahead,” to call his bluff?

What would Solomon have seen if he’d listened to the complexity of all that?

However questionable Solomon’s methods may be. The verdict returns the child to its mother – and the verdict becomes the operative reality in the lives of those involved. One woman has her child returned, and the other is left in the yawning abyss of her grieving. There they are together. I hope they turn toward each other. They have been through so much together – navigating hostile systems, building and sharing a home, birthing, now grieving loss. Will they find their way back to each other? Will compassion – the love that wells up with forgiveness –  in the midst of deep grieving, lead them into 

life.

So the verdict in this story becomes their operative reality – and we hope there is a possibility that they will move forward in wisdom.

How might this story become the operative reality in our lives?

Maybe we might first check in and ask, How are we doing listening to the most marginalized people in the midst of us? Who are the most marginalized people in our world, in our neighborhoods? Are we seeing them at all? Are we opening up space for them to tell their stories, and for us to learn?

In our day to day personal lives, are we taking the time to listen to the person standing in front of us? Not to rush in with our own preconceptions of how the world works, but taking the time to listen how others experience the world?

The wisdom with which God gifts and equips humanity endows us with agency – the ability to make meaning out of a confounding world, to choose to see each other, and to find together – even in very worst of times – ways of living that lead to more life. We have before us the testimony of these women. Their pain, their courage, their compassion. In wisdom, how might all this become the operative reality... for us?

© 2024 Scott Clark

[1] See Seow, infra, p.44.

[2] For general background on this text and 1 Kings, see Choon-Leong Seow, “The First and Second Books of Kings,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. iii (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 199), pp.36-47; Cameron B.R. Howard, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/solomons-wisdom-2/commentary-on-1-kings-34-9-10-15-16-28-2 ; Elna K. Solvang, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/solomons-wisdom-2/commentary-on-1-kings-34-9-10-15-16-28-3.

[3] See Seow, p.43.

[4] In 1 Kings 11:3, we’re told that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. There’s nothing in this text that suggests that these two women have even that access to the king.

[5] See Seow, p. 43, at how the impasse is emphasized, repeated three times in the text.

[6] See Seow, pp. 42-44.

[7] See Wilda C. Gafney, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017),  pp.118-120.

[8] See id. p.121.

[9] For examples of where it is translated with the sense of “fear,” see, Genesis 32:7 (Jacob afraid before he faces Esau), Genesis 43:18 (Joseph’s brothers  afraid when accused of stealing a cup), 1 Sam. 7:7 (the people afraid of the Philistine army).

[10] David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (New York: Random House Books, 2023), pp. 97-106.

[11] Id. p.248.

[12] Id. p.261.

[13] Id. p.207.