The very next thing, two prostitutes showed up before the king. The one woman said, “My master, this woman and I live in the same house. While we were living together, I had a baby. Three days after I gave birth, this woman also had a baby. We were alone—there wasn’t anyone else in the house except for the two of us. The infant son of this woman died one night when she rolled over on him in her sleep. She got up in the middle of the night and took my son—I was sound asleep, mind you!—and put him at her breast and put her dead son at my breast. When I got up in the morning to nurse my son, here was this dead baby! But when I looked at him in the morning light, I saw immediately that he wasn’t my baby.” ”Not so!” said the other woman. “The living one’s mine; the dead one’s yours.”
The first woman countered, “No! Your son’s the dead one; mine’s the living one.”
They went back and forth this way in front of the king.
The king said, “What are we to do? This woman says, ‘The living son is mine and the dead one is yours,’ and this woman says, ‘No, the dead one’s yours and the living one’s mine.’”
After a moment the king said, “Bring me a sword.” They brought the sword to the king.
Then he said, “Cut the living baby in two—give half to one and half to the other.”
The real mother of the living baby was overcome with emotion for her son and said, “Oh no, master! Give her the whole baby alive; don’t kill him!”
But the other one said, “If I can’t have him, you can’t have him—cut away!”
The king gave his decision: “Give the living baby to the first woman. Nobody is going to kill this baby. She is the real mother.”
The word got around—everyone in Israel heard of the king’s judgment. They were all in awe of the king, realizing that it was God’s wisdom that enabled him to judge truly.
I just love this story – think it fits in so much with our “post-modern” world where things are not so black and white and it is about the passion of the heart and not just the cerebral knowledge of our faith – what are the real issues and how does God break through with sword-like incisiveness. Yesterday I was part of a decision making process and was upheld by the last verse of Psalm 7 in the Message that says t”hank God because he always gets it right” – Lord keep me close to you so I know I am listening to you and not always me!
I love this story too Linda – and frequently long to have this sort of insightfulness when dealing with the issues of students, of my own training and with my family!!
I do think it is about listening, and I also long to be able to ‘hear’ properly what God is saying and I’m trying to cultivate a lisetning culture within me….
I struggle with that one. I really do. What am I supposed to see? The self-forgetting love of the birth-mother who is able to let go? The possessive obsessive want of the other who needed that child to fill a void? The splitting sword being the old testamentary litmus test for unconditional love? What a strange but sharp way of putting ‘wisdom’ in human perfomance. There are far too many sharp destructive objects escalating the human and spiritual parent-child relationship according to my preference and liking…
- Perhaps a simple but important learning point modern paediatricians reiterate frequently: Never have your babies stay in your bed – you might kill them by rolling over on them while you sleep!