1 Kings 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Solomon marries the daughter of Pharaoh and sacrifices at the high place in Gibeon, where God appears to him in a dream and offers him whatever he asks. Solomon asks for an understanding heart to govern and judge Israel, and God grants him wisdom along with riches and honor he did not ask for, and promises long life if he keeps God's ways as David did. Back in Jerusalem, Solomon settles a dispute between two women who each claim the same living baby, ordering the child cut in two to reveal the real mother. When Israel hears the ruling, they hold the king in awe, seeing that God's wisdom is in him.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt.
   • Solomon took Pharaoh's daughter as wife.
   • Solomon brought Pharaoh's daughter into the city of David.
   • She stayed there until he finished building his own house, the house of the LORD, and the wall around Jerusalem.
2. 3:2
   • The people were sacrificing at the high places.
   • No house had been built for the name of the LORD until that time.
3. 3:3
   • Solomon loved the LORD.
   • Solomon walked in the statutes of David his father.
   • Solomon sacrificed and burned incense at the high places.
4. 3:4
   • The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there.
   • Gibeon was the great high place.
   • Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.
5. 3:5
   • At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night.
   • God said to Solomon, Ask what I shall give you.
6. 3:6
   • Solomon said that God had shown great covenant loyalty to his servant David, Solomon's father.
   • Solomon said David walked before God in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with God.
   • Solomon said God had kept this great loyalty for David.
   • Solomon said God had given David a son sitting on his throne this day.
7. 3:7
   • Solomon said the LORD his God had made his servant king in place of David his father.
   • Solomon said he was only a little child.
   • Solomon said he did not know how to go out or come in.
8. 3:8
   • Solomon said his servant was among the people God had chosen.
   • Solomon said the people were numerous.
   • Solomon said the people could not be numbered or counted for multitude.
9. 3:9
   • Solomon asked God to give his servant a hearing heart to judge God's people.
   • Solomon asked for the ability to discern between good and evil.
   • Solomon asked who is able to judge this weighty people of God's.
10. 3:10
    • The request pleased the Lord.
    • It pleased the Lord because Solomon had asked this thing.
11. 3:11
    • God said to Solomon, Because you asked this thing.
    • God said Solomon had not asked for long life for himself.
    • God said Solomon had not asked riches for himself.
    • God said Solomon had not asked for the life of his enemies.
    • God said Solomon had asked for understanding to hear justice.
12. 3:12
    • God said he had done according to Solomon's words.
    • God said he had given Solomon a wise and discerning heart.
    • God said there had been none like Solomon before him.
    • God said none like Solomon would arise after him.
13. 3:13
    • God said he had also given Solomon what he had not asked for.
    • God said he gave Solomon riches and honor.
    • God said no man among the kings would be like Solomon all his days.
14. 3:14
    • God said that if Solomon walked in his ways, keeping his statutes and commandments, as David his father walked, then God would lengthen his days.
15. 3:15
    • Solomon awoke.
    • It had been a dream.
    • Solomon came to Jerusalem.
    • Solomon stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.
    • Solomon offered up burnt offerings.
    • Solomon offered peace offerings.
    • Solomon made a feast for all his servants.
16. 3:16
    • Two women who were prostitutes came to the king.
    • The two women stood before the king.
17. 3:17
    • One woman said, Please, my lord.
    • She said that she and the other woman lived in one house.
    • She said she gave birth while the other woman was with her in the house.
18. 3:18
    • She said that on the third day after she gave birth, the other woman also gave birth.
    • She said they were together.
    • She said there was no stranger with them in the house.
    • She said only the two of them were in the house.
19. 3:19
    • She said this woman's son died during the night.
    • She said the son died because she lay on him.
20. 3:20
    • She said the other woman arose in the middle of the night.
    • She said the other woman took her son from beside her while she slept.
    • She said the other woman laid the living son in her own bosom.
    • She said the other woman laid her dead son in the speaker's bosom.
21. 3:21
    • She said she rose in the morning to nurse her son.
    • She said the child was dead.
    • She said she examined him in the morning.
    • She said he was not the son she had borne.
22. 3:22
    • The other woman said, No, the living one is my son and the dead one is your son.
    • The first woman said, No, the dead one is your son and the living one is my son.
    • They spoke thus before the king.
23. 3:23
    • The king said that this one says, This is my living son and your son is the dead one.
    • The king said that the other says, No, your son is the dead one and my son is the living one.
24. 3:24
    • The king said, Bring me a sword.
    • They brought a sword before the king.
25. 3:25
    • The king said, Cut the living child in two.
    • The king said, Give half to one woman and half to the other.
26. 3:26
    • The woman whose son was the living one spoke to the king.
    • Her compassion for her son was stirred.
    • She said, Please, my lord, give her the living child.
    • She said, Do not put him to death.
    • The other woman said, He shall be neither mine nor yours.
    • The other woman said, Cut him in two.
27. 3:27
    • The king answered and said, Give her the living child.
    • The king said, Do not put him to death.
    • The king said, She is his mother.
28. 3:28
    • All Israel heard of the judgment the king had rendered.
    • They feared the king.
    • They saw that the wisdom of God was within him to do justice.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

Royal marriages were treaties: a king sealed an alliance by taking the other ruler's daughter as a wife. The "City of David" is the older fortified ridge of Jerusalem that David had captured, south of where the temple was later built. The "house of the LORD" is the temple, not yet begun at this point in the story.

3:2

A "high place" was a local open-air worship site, usually on a hill or raised platform, with an altar and often a standing stone or sacred pole. They were the normal places of sacrifice throughout Canaan and Israel before worship was centralized at one temple.

3:3

"Statutes" are fixed laws or decrees. Burning incense meant burning aromatic gum resin, which produced fragrant smoke, as an offering alongside animal sacrifice.

3:4

Gibeon was a town about six miles northwest of Jerusalem; other biblical accounts place the old tent sanctuary and its bronze altar there at this time. In a "burnt offering" the whole animal was burned on the altar and none of it eaten, the most costly kind of sacrifice, which makes a thousand of them a display of royal scale.

3:5

Across the ancient Near East a dream at a sanctuary was a recognized way for a god to answer someone, and people deliberately slept at holy sites hoping to receive one. The first readers would have understood Solomon's night at Gibeon as part of the worship, not as a coincidence.

3:6

"Faithful love" translates the Hebrew word hesed: loyal, obligated kindness of the sort owed between parties bound by an agreement, not simply warm feeling. "Lived before you" is an idiom for conducting one's whole life in someone's presence and service.

3:7

"I am only a little child" is a figure of speech for being untried and inexperienced; Solomon was a grown man with a wife and a son by this point. "To go out or come in" is a stock Hebrew phrase for carrying out the daily business of leadership, and especially for leading an army out to war and home again.

3:8

"Cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude" is deliberate exaggeration, the standard way of describing a people too large to census. Counting the population was itself a royal act with religious weight in Israel, so the phrase carries more than arithmetic.

3:9

In Hebrew the "heart" is the seat of thought and decision, closer to what English calls the mind. The phrase translated "understanding heart" is literally a "hearing heart", one that listens well. "Judge" here covers the whole work of governing, not just deciding court cases.

3:11

"The life of thine enemies" means their deaths. Long life, wealth and victory over enemies were exactly the three things a newly crowned king in this world was expected to request from his god, which is what makes Solomon's request notable to the original audience.

3:13

"Honour" here means public standing and weight in other people's eyes, the reputation that made a king worth dealing with, not a private feeling of self-respect.

3:14

"Lengthen thy days" means give you a long life. Note that this promise, unlike the wisdom and riches already granted, is stated as conditional.

3:15

The ark of the covenant was a gold-covered wooden chest holding the stone tablets of the law; at this point it stood in a tent in Jerusalem rather than in a temple. A "peace offering" (or fellowship offering) was a sacrifice in which only part of the animal was burned and the rest was eaten by the worshipers as a shared meal, which is why a feast follows.

3:16

The king was the court of final appeal, and anyone could in principle bring a case to him. These two women had no husbands or male relatives to speak for them and no witnesses, which is exactly why the case was impossible to settle by ordinary evidence and ended up before the king.

3:17

"My lord" was the polite way to speak to a king, like saying "Your Majesty." "I was delivered of a child" is an old phrase for giving birth.

3:19

"Overlaid it" means rolled onto the baby in her sleep and smothered him. Infants slept beside their mothers, and accidental smothering was a common and well-known cause of death.

3:20

"Bosom" means the chest and encircling arms, the position a nursing baby slept in. Because mother and infant slept pressed together in the dark, the swap the woman describes was physically possible.

3:21

"To give my child suck" means to breastfeed him. "When I had considered it" does not mean she thought it over; it means she examined the baby closely, once there was enough light to see his face.

3:24

Israelite law normally required two or more witnesses before a court could convict or decide, and here there are none: two claims, no evidence, no third person in the house. The ordinary legal process was therefore impossible, which is the situation the king is responding to when he calls for a sword.

3:26

"Her bowels yearned upon her son" uses the internal organs as the seat of powerful emotion, the way modern English uses "heart" or talks about a gut reaction. The phrase describes a physical surge of compassion. "In no wise" simply means in no way, or on no account.

3:28

"They feared the king" does not mean they were frightened of him. In the King James Bible "fear" regularly carries the sense of awe and deep respect for someone whose authority is recognized as real. "The judgment which the king had judged" is a Hebrew style of repetition that intensifies rather than repeats: the verdict he handed down as judge.