Wicked Self-Centeredness

I Kings 3:26: "The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, 'Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!' But the other said, 'Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!'"

Inserted within the pages of the history of the early years of King Solomon's reign, we find an interesting story of two women who had both birthed a child around the same time. While sleeping, the first woman tragically lay on her child and suffocated him to death; yet instead of grieving the loss of her precious child, the woman was consumed with envy of the other woman who still had a live child. One can see between the lines of the story that this woman was consumed with herself. Life to her was all about her desires, even if it meant harming others in the process. She was unable to celebrate that this other woman was blessed with a child; she coveted the live baby to the point of stealing it in the middle of the night. Specifically, the woman took her own dead baby and placed it beside the sleeping mother and in turn took the woman's live baby back to her home.

As one might expect, when the woman awakened to find a dead baby beside her, she was distraught. But as she looked closer at the child, she realized that the baby was in fact not her own. She knew that someone had come in the middle of the night and switched babies. She went to the woman who had taken her child; but of course the woman denied any wrongdoing. She swore that the live child was her own.

The disagreement intensified to the point that the king was made aware and granted permission for the two women to present their case to him. Of course, both women swore that the live child was their own, prompting the king to make an apparent drastic decision to resolve the conflict. Solomon, who had been blessed with Divine Wisdom (3:12), decided to divide the child in two and give each woman a half.

The rightful mother would not permit the king's edict to be executed; she had compassion for her son (the words literally translated here mean, 'her compassion grew warm') and she asked that the baby be given to the other woman. The mother would not have her baby killed; it was better for her baby to be given to the other woman.

But so show how utterly debased the first woman was who had switched the children, she urged the king to cut the child in two. She was not interested in having the baby; she wanted the other woman to feel the pain that she herself had endured with the loss of her own child. She was consumed with herself; and truly she would have been an unfit mother for any child.

In the end, the wisdom of the king and the selfless act of the rightful mother prevailed as the king gave the living child to the true mother. No other information is given as to the fate of the wicked woman; one would almost hope that the king enacted his sovereign judgment against such a detestible act. Nonetheless, the people were in awe at the wisdom that God had bestowed to the king in being able to administer justice.

Sadly, we find people today who have the same wicked disposition as the woman mentioned above. There are those who are always looking for ways to exploit others for their own selfish desires. They are not able to be content with what has been given to them; they are predators who prey on others for their self-aggrandizement . . . even to the point of wishing evil to others so that others cannot have an "advantage" over them. This level of "personal consumption" is evil in its most hideous form. In the end, the Righteous Judge will enact justice for such wickedness.