1 Kings 3:8-25
English Standard Version
Chapter 3
8And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. 9Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?"
10It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this.
11And God said to him, "Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right,
12behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you.
13I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days.
14And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days."
16Then two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.
17The one woman said, "Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house.
18Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house.
19And this woman 's son died in the night, because she lay on him.
20And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast.
21When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning, behold, he was not the child that I had borne."
22But the other woman said, "No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours." The first said, "No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine." Thus they spoke before the king.
23Then the king said, "The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.’"
24And the king said, "Bring me a sword." So a sword was brought before the king.
25And the king said, "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other."
