1Ki 3:16-17, 16 Now two women who were harlots came to the king, and stood before him. 17 And one woman said, “O my lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house…
The first case that ever came before the court house of Solomon was that of two prostitutes. The way he would adjudicate would cement in the minds of people that God had granted him wisdom.
In order to understand the case before Solomon’s, we have to learn something about these two women. The prostitutes lived in the same house which may suggest that they were either friends or had living arrangements due to financial hardship. This forced them to live in the same house, perhaps with some house rules in order to co exist. They seem to have lived in peace in this house, respected one another, worked together in some cases, even assisted one another. Then one day a dispute they could not resolve on their own forced them to seek justice. This was no small matter, it was a life and death situation as we shall see. They brought this case to judge Solomon. Emotions, denial, deception tied to the situation changed everything.
Now king Solomon had no resume of any cases he had presided. He had not prior experience to suggest that he was a good and fair judge or not. What we can glean from the text is that two desperate women sought for justice, and Solomon was either the high court judge who was the only one that could judge life and death cases. God has some lessons for us in this story because we all identify with a portion or the entire story of these two women. To continue.