Bad moral behavior gets excused, and ever so subtly we turn less to God more to the gods of this world. His forty year reign is regarded as Israel’s golden age. We are all born crazy, some of us just handle it better than others. For who is able to govern this vast people of yours?” The LORD was pleased that Solomon made this request. Why the hostility Howard? King Solomon's judgment became known throughout all of Israel and was considered an example of profound wisdom. etc. we never ripen on the “Vine,” for we love the world to much, and we will not “go out from amongst those” that are of the world, including myself … yes! 1. How he became the richest king of all time? As with any human being there are ambiguities about Solomon and aspects taht one will praise and another condemn. He told a servant to cut the baby in half. A few men at the right are debating the wisdom of Solomon’s judgement already, and there are two mysterious faces behind Solomon’s head. You have written artistically but so much so that I am not sure I understand your point. So both mothers claimed the one living child as their own. “Hell and Destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.” -Proverbs. You only know one, right? Even with the greatest wisdom that any man has had or will have, one can still wander astray with disastrous consquences. if ( ch_selected < ch_queries.length ) { He reminded me that I had done the same thing when I was in college (I had), and I responded, “Yeah, and I regret it. Because I have had some bad experiences with the church, I sometimes feel very insecure when I go to church. He had a wise plan. As in many confrontational situations, putting the main actors in positions where their faces and body language can be read is often difficult. I still wonder whether or not he was ‘personally’ disobedient. It goes to show that not just in our present day, but in the past the world was dominated by lust, greed, and power. Squeezed into the lower left sixth of its surface, it still manages to show the action, but working out which is the true mother is difficult. But we too can thus be led astray in the quest for ‘material’ gain. Compromises possibly? Dateing is another question related to authorship and the many date the work long after solomon to as late as the 3rd Cent BC. David spiritually survived this failing but Solomon did not. But later in life Solomon turned from his … Continue reading "The Sad End of Solomon – A Moral Tale" The Judgement of Solomon was a short story written by Lawrence Miles for the 1997 anthology Decalog 5: Wonders. Maybe they didn’t have a conception of the ‘person’ apart from the tribe (or state.) The false mother points accusingly at the child, her expression full of hatred. For the most part I do ok,, but there are some days that are very bad for me. Mother A claimed that mother B had accidentally smothered B’s own baby when she was asleep, so had taken A’s baby instead. I found this part of the reading intersting in light of the recent discussion on King David and his being told not to count the people: “I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a people so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted.”, So the moral of the story is that wisdom is over rated. Could I put in a word in praise of Solomon. (Or were the books written in explanation after the event?) A man whose heart turned from God. (I did think this one over from a personal perspective, which I think can be more edifying than ‘philosophizing’ or being ‘only’ logical or finding the best and winning ‘only’ the ‘arguments’). This hardly made him the most likely son to succeed his father as king. Does a condemnation of Solomon imply that as a person in political authority would necessarily be devoid of wisdom and obedience in one’s daily life? Putting both mothers and the living baby so close together makes it much harder to use body language to tell the story too. Both mothers are together at the right, one bent forward apparently pleading for the baby’s life, the other seemingly disinterested in events.