1 Kings 3:20

The woman who brought the complaint spoke first. She said that after she had given birth to a child, the other woman smothered her own child by lying on him at night. The other woman then changed the babies while the first mother was sleeping. When she awoke in the morning, she said, she found the child dead. But in examining him, she found this was not her child.

Men always let the character of the person speaking sway their judgment; it is not so with God. What matters to Him is the heart, not the outward character. Solomon's judgment is based on the affections shown by the heart. Statements and denials were of equal value in this case, and judgment could not be based on them. The question was not which of the two women was the more worthy — both were prostitutes. It was not whether the things complained of were likely or had happened, for there had been no witness to it. Nor was it whether the true mother could recognise her child by some outward sign — there were none.

No ruler better than Solomon shows that the heart of kings is unsearchable. See his decision in the dispute between the mothers, over whose was the dead child and whose the living one. Was there one soul who saw into his heart when he asked for a sword? Divide the living child in two, he said, and give half to the one and half to the other. The false mother was as willing as the true one was not, but who could have expected it except the king? What sounded cruel turned out wise and kind.

Solomon used something God has planted in a mother: an instinct of deepest attachment to her own child. You are not likely to find it where there is no direct vital relationship. So there remained not the slightest doubt that the first woman was the mother of the child, and the king ordered them to give the child to her.

One of them loved it with a mother's true love. The other had no love for it at all. She wanted it because she could not bear to see true love in possession of what it loved. "Bring a sword and divide the living child," said the king. For that moment the child was under the sentence of death. The sword ready to strike hung over it. How could it be saved from having the sentence carried out? True love found the way of salvation for it, but it was the way of sacrifice; that was the only way.

Self-sacrificing love has an unbreakable right to have and enjoy the one it loves. And all the power of his throne lay behind his judgment to give effect to it.

"Divide it," says the one who is not the mother, giving way to her resentment. A person quickly sacrifices Christ when it is a matter of satisfying his own passions. Only divine wisdom is able to discern the reality of profession by the state of the heart. How often there is profession without reality! Where are the affections for Christ? Where is the devotion that sacrifices even its rightful advantages and rights for Him?

The king's action made a deep impression on the people in general. "And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice." But the incident reminds us that Solomon's glorious reign did not reach perfection. It is unthinkable that anyone could bring such a sordid case for decision to Solomon's greater Son, God's "Holy One."