Cut the Kid in Two

Kings 1 3:25

^{Sometimes you just gotta cut it out. Sometimes it hurts to get to the healing.}

^{This story is about Solomon and about the soul and pain and about politics.} 

^{Three women dominate this second chapter of the Book of Kings but we do not know their names. There’s also a fourth feminine presence who descends upon King Solomon in his dream, two nameless baby boys, one dead, one saved from death, and one gleaming sword that would make Solomon world famous.} 

^{Today’s chapter begins with a royal marriage - an Egyptian Princess, one of Pharaoh's daughters,  becomes Solomon’s wife, a testament to his growing important role in the region. She will wait for her palace to be built while she is offered temporary lodging in the City of David. Nothing is known of her name or their relationship except that it is mentioned in connection to Solomon’s preference “although he loved YHWH’ to worship the local gods and goddesses of the region, at public offering altars, as was popular at the time.  The authors offer a terse verse on this polytheistic religious irregularity that will only grow in scope and size as more foreign queens join the palace, suggesting that it’s questionable behavior but without consequences.} 

^{While worshiping the local deities, Solomon starts to plan the building of the largest temple possible to YHWH, on the hilltop purchased by his father. To get ready for this grand gesture he first goes to the existing sacrificial site beloved by the locals: Gibeon, where the Prophet Samuel and King Saul led rituals, and where a gigantic Bama - sacrificial altar - has been working since those first days of the monarchy. Archeologists have dug it up and you can see it with your own eyes today - an impressive platform of carved rocks some 100 feet wide, overlooking the entire Judean hillside only several miles from Jerusalem.  From this impressive height Solomon offers 1,000 burnt offerings of cattle and sheep,  and then falls into a nocturnal reverie in which he encounters YHWH in an auspicious vision dream. “What do you wish for?” the Divine Lord asks him, ( Like a Genie. it’s the only time such a generous request is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible) and Solomon replies without hesitation “Give me an understanding heart with which to rule wisely and distinguish between good and evil.”}  

^{YHWH, impressed that Solomon does not request riches etc, provides the king with wisdom that will become his claim to fame.} 

^{No sooner had the king returned to his court in Jerusalem when his new-found wisdom was called to the test, with what will become world famous as the ‘Judgment of Solomon.’} 

^{That’s where the babies and the sword come in.} 

^{Two women, both of them sex-workers, living in the same house, seek the King’s judgment. They both gave birth around the same time but one of the babies died, and the bereaved mother switched the babies so that the dead one will be found in the arm of the other mother, as she was sleeping, while the living baby would be claimed as the first mother’s own.} 

^{But whose baby is it? Who’s the real mother?} 

^{Solomon’s strategy was to stun the guilty mother into confession:}

^{וַיֹּ֣אמֶר הַמֶּ֔לֶךְ גִּזְר֛וּ אֶת־הַיֶּ֥לֶד הַחַ֖י לִשְׁנָ֑יִם וּתְנ֤וּ אֶֽת־הַחֲצִי֙ לְאַחַ֔ת וְאֶֽת־הַחֲצִ֖י לְאֶחָֽת׃}

^{“The king said, “Cut the live child in two, and give half to one and half to the other.”}

^{Kings 1 3:25}

^{The mother who preferred to give away the baby rather than watch it die was declared the winner. Case closed.  Fame gone viral.} 

^{So what’s this story really about? Scholars prove that similar tales exist in all world cultures, from India to China, later echoed in modern classics such as Brecht’s ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”   It was likely edited to fit in this narrative, where nobody, not even the king, has a name, with the purpose of glorifying the king’s wise heart, newly awarded by the divine.} 

^{Among the many ways to read deeper into this traumatic tale of anguish and ingenuity are some mystical, as well as political angles.} 

^{One tradition looks at this story, coming right after Solomon gets ‘a listening and wise heart’ as the initial emergence of what will be known as the Wisdom Literature. Often identified as Sophia - the feminine incarnation of knowledge, intuition and wisdom, this quality will show up later in the Bible and particularly in the Scroll of Proverbs, attributed to Solomon. Where does this deep wisdom come from? The original story - where the tree of knowledge still blooms. This makes Solomon shine like Adam, returning to the Garden of Eden, getting beyond good and evil, exactly as he has asked for in his dream.} 

^{Peter Leithart, a Christian theologian, writes:} 

^{“Solomon asks for wisdom, more specifically for “discernment of good and evil” … (3:9), using a phrase similar to that found in Gen. 2–3 to describe the tree in the garden … a tree that gives wisdom. Solomon’s request can thus be described as a request for access to the tree forbidden to Adam. Like Adam, Solomon goes into “deep sleep” in order to receive a bride, but Solomon awakes in the company of ‘Lady Wisdom’. “}

^{Solomon’s first official role here as the judge of his people is not about knowing the law - but about using his intuition and deeper sense of wisdom to get beyond missing evidence, competing claims, and come up with a perceptive solution that solved the mystery. He never meant to hurt the baby - but the dramatic ruse worked.  Each of us, like Solomon, is likewise invited to enter deeper into the realm of wisdom and intuition, beyond good and bad, into ultimate truth and life.} 

^{Then there are more political ways of reading this text, that seem particularly resonant these days, as deep divisions and growing gaps and societal polarization threaten the very fabric of nations and communities, about to be torn in two.}  

^{While the growing civic crisis in Israel these days is a relatively new reality, the roots of this conflict are much older, and the echo of today’s biblical story was already remarked upon by many over the years.  In 2006, Eyal Meged, an Israeli journalist and author linked Solomon’s trial to the political drama of that day, commenting in the Israeli newspaper Mekor Rishon on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the division of the Holy Land:} 

^{“The recent order by the Minister of Education to make sure that the “Green Line” (marking the border between Israel proper from the Palestinian Territories annexed by israel in 1967)  - has far reaching implications beyond political arguments or positions. I find myself in agreement with Uzi Benziman, who wrote this week in “Ha’arettz” that the Green Line is not just a temporary marker with an expiration date, but an actual border, referenced to by the mentality of this country.  I want to pay attention to one, critical aspect, in this minister’s order. You can call it simply “Solomon’s Judgment” and you can sum it up in one sentence, as a mythic verdict deserves: Whoever is willing to cut the baby, is not the one to whom the baby belongs.} 

^{The Palestinians, it will be said in the future by people who will rise as witnesses and judges in this trial, never mark this Green Line on any of their maps. Their school books and maps hanging on school walls show one irrefutable land, undivided, uncontested, unable to be cut into two. There are no halves, just the whole. Not only do they love this land more, the future verdict of the nations may claim, with accumulated evidence, not only are they more attached to it, they are also not ready to give up a single part of it - and will die and kill for that right. All this must have ramifications on the question - who owns this land?”} 

^{Whatever we do with this wisdom that our human heart still longs for, with so many rifts and repairs waiting to soothe grief and growing divides -- Solomon’s story remains a weird model for somehow finding ways to avoid injustice and expose fault lines on our way to holy and more wholesome lives. Everyone. Everywhere.} 

^{As for King Solomon on his throne in Jerusalem - his journey has just begun.}

^{Sometimes you just gotta cut it out. Sometimes it hurts to get to the healing.}

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