The woman who was not the baby's mother wouldn't actually have said out loud that she wanted her friend's baby to die, and so Solomon had devised this "test" in order to get her to express what she was really after. Here's the commentary of the Malbim to I Kings , who shows that the wording of each of the two women tipped off King Solomon to the solution:.
Scripture tells how regarding their words, by one claimant using the language of " my son is alive and your son is dead ," and the other claimant saying [in] the reverse [order], " your son is dead and my son is alive. And from this [Solomon] was already able to understand and discern who is his mother.
Thus, once it was clear to Solomon that the second woman was more interested in making sure that her fellow was the one subject to having a dead child, he was able to exploit that fact by showing that she would be fine with such a verdict - even at the expense of a child's life. The Meiri asks and answers this question in Yevamos 17b:. The two women were mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and their husbands had died before having any other children other than these two.
The daughter-in-law's son had died within 30 days of being born, which would be considered a Nefel and would not exempt her from Yibum. Therefore the daughter-in-law would have to wait until the mother-in-law's child her husband's new barely contemporary brother to reach 13 years old in order to do Yibum or Chalitza , and she would remain an Agunah until then, unable to get married. Instead, she switched her child with her mother-in-law's child, this way she could be exempt from Yibum by having a surviving child and no Yavam.
When Shlomo said to cut the baby in half, the daughter-in-law approved of this because it would still allow her to get remarried as there would be no Yavam. Here is a diagram which may help clarify:.
My understanding of the story goes against the universal one, but fits with the text and answers your question and a lot of others Woman A the one holding the live child was trying to be demonstrative of how motherly she was, expecting to be allowed to keep the child, even though she was saying that she would let the other one take the baby.
Woman B the real mother felt trapped. She can't say "yes, I will take the baby", because then Woman A will be allowed to keep the baby for being more "motherly". Obviously she can't now say, "no, you keep the baby". So Woman A passes the play back to Shlomo. Shlomo never meant to kill the child, and neither did Woman A. Shlomo actually gave the baby to Woman B, and not to the one who was willing to let the other take the baby. Woman A was a show off, Woman B was authentic. There is a vague pronoun reference when the king says, "Give her the child".
Though it is always understood to be referring to the Woman A, grammatically it should refer to the last one who spoke, i. Woman B. This obviously quite shocked all who were present, who "stood in awe of the king; for they saw that he possessed divine wisdom to execute justice.
Being creatures of dual, competing interests, there exists in some persons, such as myself, the ability for or a manifestation of a vindictive spirit, or attitude, under certain circumstances. In the case of envy, when we observe something that is not ours that we want, we wish we could have it. If we can't, we may even wish the other did not have it, in order to relieve ourselves of having to even compare with the fact that they have something we don't have, but want.
Under severe stain, it is the same spirit as "If I can't have it, nobody can! For jealously, we either a have something that we hold dear, or b we believe that someone has something that "should be ours" through a rationalization of having been wronged, and therefore "deserving" of the object that we believe ought to be ours.
This is closely related to envy. However in this state of mind we cannot recognize it as envy, because we "believe" that the object "should" be ours. The woman who agreed to cut the baby in half was in these states. She was the very unfortunate recipient of having lost a child, coupled with not having the self-awareness which often comes through good parenting or divine gift, but which may also come secondary to these by individual recognition to see or understand that her state was a terrible one, bitter and terrible enough to agree to the destruction of another life out of co-morbid envy and jealousy gone wild.
Solomon had the wisdom to know that such an individual should not be either "the" parent, or a parent at all. I have been fortunate enough to see the existence of these states in myself, only perhaps not as closely tied to the life and death of another individual, the honor for which ought to go to my parents.
The answer is that Shlomo Hamelech never intended to actually split cut the baby in half. He did however rule that the women should share custody of the child The woman who was not the true mother was overjoyed with this ruling. Not having been blessed with children herself, she now had the opportunity, at least for half of the time, to be a mother to a child. She was now able to fill her need, again, if only for just half of the time. The true mother protested.
As a true mother, putting her child's needs before hers, she protested because she understood that this "arrangement" would hurt her child. She understood how detrimental it would be for her child to be raised by "two separate mothers"; hearing two different sets of messages, seeing two different standards, values, etc. She understood the importance of a child hearing the same message, wherever he goes, and the detriment of having a conflicting and divergent education.
I believe this is from a sicha of the Rebbe on Chanukah where the Rebbe explains that the Greeks were like the woman B, happy for jews the baby to share Greek and Jewish culture. Both had recently given birth, but one child had died. The story is recounted in the Old Testament I Kings 3: Solomon announced that the child should be cut in two, so that each mother should have half.
The real mother, unable to bear her son being killed, immediately offered it to the other woman, to save the child's life, whereas the other agreed to the proposal. Before the Buddha became the Buddha, he lived many past lives. In one of these past lives, he was a wise sage. The sage said the only fair thing to do was to play tug of war. The women were told to pull the baby to their side of the line. The winner would get the baby.
Of course, the baby screamed out, and, of course, the true mother showed her true colors when she gave up her claim on the baby in order to keep the baby from getting hurt.
Both of these parables teach the same lesson that true love means sacrifice. If we truly love someone, we sometimes need to let that person be free.
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