“The Bible’s Children: the two sons”
I Kings 3:16-22
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Four years ago, back in September of 2018, three law professors published a book they called Tough Cases, what Greta van Sustren would call, “An unprecedented view from the bench of compelling stories told by trial judges as they grapple with the most fundamental questions in life and the law. The honesty, compassion, frustration, angst, and indeed courage of these judges shine through.”
After all, she said, “Prosecutors and defense attorneys have it easy--all they have to do is to present the evidence and make arguments. It’s the judges who have the heavy lift: they’re the ones who have to make the ultimate decisions, many of which have profound consequences on the lives of the people standing in front of them.”
To put it another way, how would you like to say to the man or woman standing in front of you, “You’re going to go to prison for the rest of your life”?
And in that book, the authors touch on thirteen different cases, like the case of Terri Schiavo, where Judge George Greer had to decide whether she should continue to live or be allowed to die, or the case of seven-year-old Elian Gonzalez whose mother drowned while trying to bring him to the United States, or Scooter Libby who revealed the name of a CIA agent, or Banita Jacks, the woman accused of killing her own four little children.
As one of the authors wrote, “Whether it persuades or not, our goal is to offer a firsthand and nuanced account of hard cases, as told by the judges who actually had to decide them. And we hope that all who read it will come away with a renewed faith that our justice system--sometimes maligned and not always perfect--is still the best in the world and, together with a free press, the bedrock of our democracy.”
The Bible has quite a lot to say about court cases. Moses wrote, “You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s. And the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it” (Deuteronomy 1:17). The prophet Zechariah wrote, “These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another, and judge with truth and judgment for peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16). And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5: “Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent” (Matthew 5:25-26).
But of all the court cases that have ever been or ever will be, perhaps none is more well-known or more compelling than the case of the two women and their two sons.
I’ll read the words of I Kings chapter 3, beginning at verse 16: “Then two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. The one woman said, ‘Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house. And this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning, behold, he was not the child that I had born.’ But the other woman said, ‘No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours.’ The first said, ‘No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.’ Thus they spoke before the king” (I Kings 3:16-22).
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
Nearly a thousand years before Christ, David’s son Solomon, at the ripe old age of twenty, became king. And just as soon as he became king, he went to a town called Gibeon to make a sacrifice there. And while he was there, as the Bible says, “At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, ‘Ask what I shall give you’” (I Kings 3:5).
Now if you don’t mind me saying, that’s pretty amazing! I mean, think about it! Suppose God appeared to you and made you the same offer--”Say, Steve, you can have whatever you want. Name it and it’s yours!”
What would you say? Would you ask God for a better job, a bigger house, or a nicer car? There are probably a dozen things you might ask for, many of which would be perfectly valid choices.
But when God offered Solomon this rather astonishing, blank check, anything-you-want offer, he didn’t respond like most of us would. Instead, knowing all too well that he was too young and too inexperienced and completely out of his depth to serve as king, rather than asking for wealth or power or the death of his enemies, he said: “You have shown great and steadfast love to Your servant David my father, because he walked before You in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward You…Give Your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern Your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this Your great people?” (I Kings 3:6, 9).
“Lord, help me,” he prayed. “Help me to know the difference between right and wrong. And then I’ll know how to rule Your people.”
And no sooner had we woken up from his dream and returned to his palace in Jerusalem, that he faced one of his most perplexing court cases of all--a case about two women and their two sons.
Now the first thing that strikes us about this story is that the women were prostitutes. Of that, the Bible is perfectly clear.
Which is strange! You see, back in Solomon’s day, prostitutes were pretty much nobodies, as in the bottom rung of the ladder, the low man on the totem pole. Absolutely no one cared about them, (at least not when they were done using them). So we wonder--how did their case ever make it all the way up to King Solomon?
Did they already exhaust every other avenue? Did they go first to their man or madam or town mayor or local judge? And did each one already give exactly the same answer--”What do you expect me to do? Obviously one of you is lying, but how can I possibly know which one for sure?”
But rather than spend the rest of her life plagued with “what ifs” and “if onlys,” one of the women took her case all the way up to the top, to the king--King Solomon.
Now you have to admit that this case is rather complicated! Here we have two women of questionable repute, each of whom claimed maternal rights to a single living child. And not only is there a living child, there’s also a dead child, an alleged cover up, and no witnesses. There had already been significant trauma on both sides and there would likely be a lifetime of trauma for everyone ahead.
Even more, prostitution was illegal and having a child because of prostitution wasn’t all that okay either. Still, to Solomon’s credit, he agreed to hear the case.
And as they stood before him, woman #1 began to spill it all out. She said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house. And this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast” (I Kings 3:17-20).
“No!” the other woman rudely interrupted. “The living child is mine, and the dead child is yours” (I Kings 16:22).
Like I said, it’s a pretty tough case, for here we have an urgent problem posed by two women whose stories were completely contradictory. Depending upon who was talking, it all could go either way, putting the baby in grave danger of being placed in the custody of the wrong mother!
So in the face of “she said--she said,” what would King Solomon do?
He said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.’” Then he said, “Bring me a sword, and divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other” (I Kings 3:23-25).
Now for the record, it’s important to say that Solomon had absolutely no intention, whatsoever, of killing the living child. As king, even though he had every right to use the sword, there was no possible way he would endanger the life of the child.
Besides, it’s safe to say he already had a pretty good idea which of the two women was the real mother. He just wanted to give them a chance to prove it.
And sure enough, just as he expected, because the real mother really loved her son, she said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” And the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.”
And it was all pretty simple after that. As Solomon said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death, for she is his mother” (I Kings 3:27).
And as the Bible says: “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” (I Kings 3:28).
Fifteen years ago, back in 2008, a municipal court judge from Columbus, Ohio named Paul Herbert was teaching his daughters how to find their life’s purpose, until one night, one of them asked, “Daddy, what’s your purpose in life?” And after giving her a rather vague answer, he realized he really didn’t know.
So that night, he prayed a prayer. He said, “I realize that being a judge is a very unique position. Not many people get this opportunity. Can You show me some way that I could be significant for You in my work?”
About nine months later, after seeing one victim after another after another of domestic violence, the sheriff brought a prostitute into his courtroom that looked exactly like every one of the other victims he had already been seeing.
And that’s when he got to thinking--what if he could help them leave that life behind? So he started something he called “CATCH court,” an acronym for “Changing Attitudes to Change Habits.” So rather than cycling the same women in and out of jail, he put them into a two-year program of drug treatment and counseling.
Later he said, “The Holy Spirit continues to reveal how much I’ve been forgiven, and how similar I am to the individuals that come before me. While my job is to judge, the farther I go along in my faith, the more I realize that I’m just like most of them--and that makes me more understanding, more kind, and more merciful.”
Before we leave this text, there’s one more question we have to ask. And that is, where is God in all of this? I mean, this has to be about more than just two prostitutes and their two sons!
The answer’s found in this--like the true mother in this story who knew her child, who had compassion on him, and who would not give up on him, God will not forsake His children. And if an immoral prostitute loved her child this much, how much more does a holy God love us?
No matter what you’ve done, He knows you and He wants you, and He’s there to welcome you home. And not only does He give His very best for you, He gave Himself so that you could live.
As the apostle Paul once wrote to the Romans: “One will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows His love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).
We thank You, dear Father, for the mercy and kindness You show day after day. Grant that even we may find hope and rescue in the strength of Your everlasting arms, for Jesus’ sake. Amen