1. And Solomon became son-in-law to Pharaoh. The Hebrew verb, although it involves marriage, indicates an establishment of relationship between the groom and the father of the bride. The marriage is thus politically motivated and will be the first of many such unions for Solomon in his effort to consolidate the mini-empire created by his father.

took. This ordinary verb often has the force of “marry,” as here.

2. But the people were sacrificing on the high places. Since the Temple was not yet built, there was no alternative to these local altars on hilltops. But the notation reveals the unease of the Deuteronomist with a moment when both the people and Solomon himself offered sacrifices at sites other than the center of the cult in Jerusalem. The strong presence of the Deuteronomist and the shift that reveals itself in the subsequent passages to a different kind of narrative suggest that the book has now moved on from the David story to the work of very different writers.

3. Solomon loved the LORD. This is not said of David. There may be a play on Solomon’s other name, Jedidiah, which means friend, or lover (though different from the verb used here), of the LORD.

4. for it was a great high place. Evidently, the altar at Gibeon was much larger than the one Solomon had available in Jerusalem, hence his move to Gibeon to offer a huge sacrifice.

5. a night-dream. This is a lesser form of divine revelation, one even vouchsafed the pagan king Abimelech (Genesis 20). In the David story, God calls upon Nathan the prophet in a night-vision, but it is Nathan as intermediary who then goes to deliver the message to David (2 Samuel 7).

6. David my father . . . walked in Your presence in truth and in justice. The words assigned here to Solomon adopt the Deuteronomist’s revisionist portrait of David (see the comment on 2:3–4) as an exemplary servant of God. The actual representation of David gives us a much more mixed picture of the man with all his calculations of power and his weaknesses and moral failings.

7. not knowing how to lead into the fray. The account of Solomon’s reign does not represent him as a military leader combating surrounding nations, but in assuming the throne he does have dangerous enemies in the court who could have contested the succession.

9. May You give Your servant an understanding heart. Solomon’s legendary wisdom is here given a divine etiology: it is the one gift he asks of God, and it is granted.

vast. Elsewhere this term usually means “heavy.”

13. wealth and honor, so that there will not have been any man like you among kings. This statement, of course, is a fantastic exaggeration because the head of a small kingdom like Israel could scarcely compare with the monarchs who commanded the great empires to the east and the south. Solomon, quite unlike David, is manifestly woven out of the stuff of legend in this literary account.

16. Then two whore-woman. The introduction of the story with “then,” ʾaz, is unusual in Hebrew narrative. It clearly serves to mark a direct link with the preceding episode: the gift of wisdom that God has granted Solomon will now be exemplified in this tale.

stood in his presence. A primary function of the monarch, in the Bible and in the Ugaritic texts before it, is to administer justice, and so the two whores come before him to make their case against each other.

17. a single house . . . gave birth alongside her in the house. The repetition of “house” (which recurs still again twice in the next verse) both underlines the idea of their sharing quarters and reflects the style of this story, which abounds in symmetrical repetitions. It may not be coincidental that the larger narrative of Solomon begins (verse 1) by twice using the same word, “house.”

18. no stranger was with us. There are therefore no witnesses.

19. as she had lain upon him. There is thus a suggestion that the mother of the dead child may have been negligent, and at any rate she was inadvertently responsible for her infant’s death.

22. “No, for my son” . . . And the other said, “No, for your son.” This interechoing dialogue, heightened by the fact that neither woman is given a name, underscores the seeming undecidability of the case: each is saying exactly the same thing, so how can anyone know which one is lying? Solomon’s repetition of their words in the next verse amplifies this effect.

25. Cut the living child in two. This momentarily shocking decree, which then will be seen to be a manifestation of Solomon’s wisdom, is a clear expression of the fabulous or folktale character of the whole story. There is an approximate equivalent of the Judgment of Solomon in Indian literature that some scholars think may even have been its ultimate source, reaching ancient Israel through oral transmission. In any case, it sounds very much like a tale of surprising wisdom told among the people, or perhaps among many peoples, that was eventually attributed to Solomon.

26. Neither mine nor yours shall he be. Finally, the bewildering symmetry between the two women is shattered, and the false mother reveals herself.

Cut him apart. This plural imperative is a single word in the Hebrew, gezoru (“cut”), exposing the brutal lack of maternal feeling of the lying woman.

28. for they saw that God’s wisdom was within him. This concluding flourish confirms that God’s promise to Solomon of a discerning heart has been amply realized.