1 Kings 3:26

Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.

"The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The judgment of Solomon is a striking commentary on this passage; indeed, it is possible that the writer had this incident in his mind when he penned these words. For assuredly the word of Solomon, "Divide," etc; was sharper than the sword they had just brought him £ in wounding the mother's heart (Cf. Luke 2:35 ); while not more surely would the king's sword, had it not been stayed, have pierced to the " dividing asunder of the joints and marrow" of the child, than did the king's word distinguish between the true and the false, revealing both the tenderness and yearning love of the real mother, and also the thoughts and intents and workings of heart of the pretender. It is probably, in part at least, because of their revelation of character that they are recorded here. Let us now, therefore, consider the character and motives of the pseudo mother, as disclosed to us in her words and conduct. And first, let us ask, what can have led to this cruel and unnatural speech? Here is a woman who has recently become a mother, and who claims to be the mother of the child, having no pity on a helpless babe. At one moment, she strenuously contends before the king for its possession, and at the next she connives at, and indeed clamours for, its murder. She has surreptitiously taken it from one who would have guarded and cherished it; she loudly protests that it is hers; she is so anxious to have it that she will plead for it before the royal tribunal, and yet, when it is gravely proposed to cut the hapless child in two, she is loud in her approval of the plan. How can we account for such strange inconsistency? The usual explanation is that she was impelled to do and say what she did by spite, by jealousy. And, without doubt, there was an element of spite in her conduct. If she was to be denied the child, she was resolved that none else should have it. She would never submit to the humiliation of leaving the judgement seat with the character of an impostor, while that other one carried off the babe in her arms in triumph. But while the feeling of "dog in the manger" explains much, it does not explain all. It does not account, for example, for her having cumbered herself with the care of the child in the first instance; and it hardly explains her proceeding to the extremity of judicial murder. Nor even if we combine with spite the desire to flatter the youthful king, do we find a sufficient explanation of her inconsistency. No doubt she thought it would be a compliment to her prince readily to acquiesce in his proposal. It is not the first time or the last that men have readily assented to wrong-doing because a crowned head suggested it. We see in her cry, "Divide it," a cringing, fawning desire to ingratiate herself into Solomon's favour, or if not that, at least to play the courtier; but we do not see in this desire alone a sufficient explanation of this clamour for the life of a puling and innocent babe. No, if we are to get at the very root of her strange and shameful conduct, we must first ask another question, viz; What led her to steal this child from its mother's arms and to claim it for her own? What induced her when she woke in the night and found her own child dead, to creep in the darkness to her companion's couch and take a changeling for her son. For this was surely a strange thing to do. We could more readily understand her rejoicing in the death of her own child of shame than this eager desire to burden herself with a bastard that she had not borne.

Now, it is quite possible that there were special circumstances connected with this case, which, if we knew them, would offer a complete and certain explanation of her conduct. For example, to pass by other possibilities, hers may have been such case as Tamar's ( Genesis 38:1-30 .) But as we do not and cannot know what these peculiar circumstances were, if there were any, we can only collect her motives, as best we may, from the record of facts which we possess.

It is clear, then, that she was not actuated by love for the child. It is unlikely that a woman such as she was could have love for a child such as this was; while it is inconceivable that if she really loved it, she would have consented to and counselled its death. Nor can it have been the pride and joy of having a man child to call her son (1Jn 16:21). For the child was not hers, and no one knew this better than herself. No doubt the Jewish mother had special reasons for desiring offspring and for cherishing her children, but this was the child of stranger.

What then were her motives? Were they not these? First, the fear of reproach, and secondly, jealousy of her more fortunate companion. Fear of reproach; for no woman, in any age of the world, or under any circumstances, can fail to be mortified and humbled and ashamed at having occasioned, by her maladroitness, the death of her child. She knew what the tongues of the neighbours would say: she could see them, perhaps, even mocking her as a murderess. For they could not know that the death was accidental and some of them, she feared, might think, if they did not say, that there had been foul play on her part. These thoughts, as they rushed through her mind in the black and dark night, would be accentuated and made well nigh intolerable by the thought that her companion had been more careful or more fortunate. What may have passed between these two women we cannot say. For aught we know, each may have boasted of her child, or the one may have disparaged the child of the other. There must almost have been something of the kind—and it may have been something extremely simple—to account for this act of child stealing.

It is quite possible, of course, that this woman, had she been interrogated after the fraud was detected, would have found it difficult to say what led her to play this false part. For we may rest assured she did not argue about it, did not stop to parley with herself or to weigh the consequences. She acted on a blind, hasty, unreasoning impulse. But all the same it is not difficult for us to see that these must have been among the springs of her conduct. And when the fatal move was once made, the rest of her sin is easily explained. There was then nothing for her to do but to brazen it out. It was impossible for her to stop, without proclaiming herself both liar and thief. As she had lied to her companion, so she must lie to the neighbours, and as she had lied to the neighbours, so she must lie even before the king. There was no help for it. Vestigia nulla retrorsum! She must go on to the bitter end.

But it is easy to see how terribly trying and painful her position would at last become. The constant fear of detection, or the fear lest she should betray herself, must have made it almost insupportable. Any moment something might ooze out which would reveal the deceit and cover her with infamy. Bitterly must she have regretted that she had ever embarked on this course of fraud; eagerly must she have cast about for any chance of escape.

And so when the king proposed to cut the Gordian knot; when he proposed, that is, to extricate her from the toils which she had woven round herself, is there any wonder that she caught eagerly at the first chance that offered, and that without a moment's reflection as to the morality of the remedy, and without the least perception of the snare that was spread for her. All she thought was that it promised an honourable retreat from ground which was every moment becoming more insecure; that it opened to her, in her despair and dread of detection, a door of escape. It is this accounts for the cry, "Divide it." The murder would cover her multitude of lies, the blood of the innocent would efface the traces of her guilt.

The lessons taught by this history must be very briefly indicated. Among them are these:

1. Impurity almost inevitably leads to deceit. The root of all the mischief here was the unchastity. The sin against the body makes other sins comparatively easy. "It is only the first step that costs." And what a step is that!

2. Moral cowardice may lead to murder. The fear which prompted the hasty resolve to possess herself of the living child, led this miserable woman to stealing, lying, persistent falseness, and to murder, in thought and will. Facilis descensus Averni, etc.

3. Falsehood leads to falsehood. The proverb says, "If we tell one lie we must tell twenty more to bury it." "One lie must be thatched with another or it will soon rain through."

"O what a tangled web we weave

When once we venture to deceive."

4. Jealousy dries up the milk of human kindness. It is "cruel as the grave."

"Fiercer than famine, war, or spotted pestilence;

Baneful as death, and horrible as hell."

It led this woman to act like a fiend; to desire the butchery of an innocent babe.

5. Sin overreaches itself. The pretender was caught in her own toils. She had no sooner said, "Divide it," than she saw she was undone. She had proclaimed her own falseness. "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee."

6. When the sinner is most secure, then sudden destruction comes upon him. This woman had never breathed freely till Solomon said, "Divide it." That seemed such a certain deliverance that she echoed the cry. Now she began to feel safe. The next moment she was disgraced, condemned, ruined. Cf. Matthew 24:50 ; Matthew 25:44 ; 1 Thessalonians 5:8 , etc.