Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Then spake the woman, whose the living child was, unto the king,.... In haste, and with great vehemency, lest the executioner should at once dispatch it:

(for her bowels yearned upon her son); not being able to bear to see his life taken away:

and she said, O my lord: or, "on me^F17בי "in me", Montanus; so Abarbinel. , my lord"; let the sin, the lie that I have told, be on me, and the punishment of it; she rather chose to be reckoned a liar, and to endure any punishment such an offence deserved, than that her child should be cut asunder:

give her the living child, and in no wise slay it; being willing to part with her interest in it, rather than it should be put to death:

but the other said, let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it; for as she knew it was not her own, she had no affection for it, nor desire to have it; chose rather to be clear of the expense of keeping and nursing it, and would, by its being put to death, be avenged of her adversary, who had brought this cause before the king.

Geneva Study Bible

Then spake the woman whose the living child [was] unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and ⁿ in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, [but] divide [it].

(n) Her motherly affection appears in that she would rather endure the rigor of the law than see her child cruelly slain.

John Trapp Complete Commentary

1 Kings 3:26 Then spake the woman whose the living child [was] unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, [but] divide [it].

Ver. 26. For her bowels yearned.] Good blood, we say, will not belie itself: good nature will work.

O my lord.] Parce puero, spare my child: this she would have said to the king. Give her, &c. This she saith to the officers.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

26.Let it be neither mine nor thine — Wordsworth compares this language of the false mother to the demands of schism in the Church of Christ, and calls it “the popular language of sects and sectaries, who say, Let various forms of religion be equally encouraged and patronized; there are numerous different ways all leading to heaven, and every man is free to choose which he likes best for himself, without any regard to the authority and judgment of Christ speaking in his Church. But the true mother shuns division and loves unity.” There may be some force in such comparison, if it is aimed against that wicked kind of schism which delights to make discord and dispute among the true disciples of Christ; but when aimed against the various evangelical denominations into which Protestant Christendom is divided, the comparison becomes ludicrous, and the comment above quoted may be turned upon its author and the Church party he represents with biting force. “High Churchism,” whether in Rome, England, or America, has been, in her legitimate results, the most schismatic of all “sects.” “Her zeal for unity,” which the above-named writer regards as “the evidence of her marriage and of her motherhood,” has never scrupled, when she had the power, to use the fagot and the sword in accomplishing her objects. So she has followed the fleshly methods of the child of that Sinai “which gendereth to bondage,” (Galatians 4:24, compare 29.) Not organic unity, but the unity of spiritual freedom, is the mark of that “Jerusalem which is the mother of us all.” Contemptible is that narrowness which sees in the unity of Romish ecclesiasticism a something better than the unity of spirit and of life which is the glory of evangelical Protestantism. The true mother in this narrative showed at least the spirit of concession and yielding to her rival; but when did ever the narrow ecclesiasticism of papacy or semi-papacy yield even the most trivial point to a rival “sect” in order to secure organic unity, or when did she ever say to her rival, in the spirit of the true mother, “Give her the living child?”

E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes

said = kept on saying.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.

her bowels

Genesis 43:30; Isaiah 49:15; Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 11:8; Philippians 1:8; 2:1; 1 John 3:17

yearned

Heb. were hot.

Psalms 39:3

give her

Romans 1:31; 2 Timothy 3:3

Reciprocal: Genesis 21:16 - Let;  2 Kings 6:29 - she hath hid;  Job 39:16 - as;  Song of Solomon 5:4 - my bowels;  2 Corinthians 7:15 - inward affection is