1 Kings 3:23

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹⁶At that time two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. ¹⁷One woman said, "Please, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth while she was in the house. ¹⁸On the third day after I gave birth, this woman also had a baby. We were alone, with no one in the house but the two of us. ¹⁹During the night this woman's son died because she rolled over on him. ²⁰So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I was asleep. She laid him in her bosom and put her dead son at my bosom. ²¹The next morning, when I got up to nurse my son, I discovered he was dead. But when I examined him, I realized that he was not the son I had borne." ²²"No," said the other woman, "the living one is my son and the dead one is your son." But the first woman insisted, "No, the dead one is yours and the living one is mine." So they argued before the king. ²³Then the king replied, "This woman says, 'My son is alive and yours is dead,' but that woman says, 'No, your son is dead and mine is alive.'"²⁴The king continued, "Bring me a sword." So they brought him a sword, ²⁵and the king declared, "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other."

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Reciprocal: 1 Kings 3:22 - Nay Proverbs 15:28 - heart

Cross-References

Genesis 2:5
Now no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth, nor had any plant of the field sprouted; for the LORD God had not yet sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.

Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground-because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Genesis 4:2
Later she gave birth to Cain's brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, while Cain was a tiller of the soil.

Genesis 4:12
When you till the ground, it will no longer yield its produce to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth."

Genesis 9:20
Now Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.

Ecclesiastes 5:9
The produce of the earth is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Then said the king,.... As judge, summing up what had been said on both sides, which were only bare assertions without proof; the one affirming what the other denied, and the other denying what the other affirmed:

the one saith, this [is] my son that liveth, and thy son [is] the dead;

and the other saith nay; but thy son [is] the dead, and my son [is] the living; this he repeated to show to all present that no determination could be made by what had been said on each side, and that some other method must be taken.