And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do justice.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Such a Shechem is the church; for Solomon chose her whose hidden love he had discerned. Such a Shechem is Mary, whose soul God’s sword pierces and divides. Such a Shechem is a “coming up,” even as it appears in the meaning of the word. As to what the “coming up” is, hear Solomon speaking in reference to the church, “Who is she that comes up clothed in white, leaning on her brother?” She is radiant, a word expressed in Greek as aktinodes, because she is resplendent in faith and in works. To her children it is said, “Let your works shine before my Father, who is in heaven.” - "The Prayer of Job and David 4.4.16"
Is not that noble judgment of Solomon full of wisdom and justice? Let us see whether it is so. “Two women,” it says, “stood before King Solomon, and the one said to him, ‘Hear me, my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house, and before the third day we gave birth and bore a son apiece and were together; there was no witness in the house, nor any other woman with us, only we two alone. And her son died this night, because she laid on him, and she arose at midnight, and took my son from my breast and laid him in her bosom, and her dead child she laid at my breast. And I arose in the morning to nurse my child and found him dead. And I examined him at dawn, and behold, it was not my son.’ And the other woman said, ‘No, but the living is my son, and the dead is your son.’ ” This was their dispute, in which either tried to claim the living child for herself and denied that the dead one was hers. Then the king commanded a sword to be brought and the infant to be cut in half, and either piece...
But there is no greater proof of charity in Christ’s church than when the very honor that seems so important among people is despised, in order to prevent the limbs of the infant being cut in two and Christian infirmity being torn to shreds by the break of unity. The apostle says that he had shown himself like a mother to the little ones among whom he had done the good work of the gospel, not he but the grace of God in him. That harlot could call nothing her own except her sins, whereas the gift of fertility she had from God. And the Lord says beautifully about a harlot, “She to whom much is forgiven loves much.” So the apostle Paul says, “I became a little one among you, like a wet-nurse fondling her children.” But when it comes to the danger of the little one being cut in two, when Insincerity claims for herself a spurious dignity of motherhood and is prepared to break up unity, the mother despises her proper dignity provided she may see her son whole and preserve him alive; she is a...
Again, I see these two women in one house as representing two kinds of people in one church: one of them dominated by insincerity, the other ruled by charity. So we may regard these two kinds of people simply like two women, called love and insincerity. Insincerity, of course, deceitfully imitates love. That is why the apostle warns us against her when he says, “Let love be without insincerity.” Although the two live in one house as long as that gospel net is in the sea, enclosing good and bad fish together until it is brought ashore, yet each is doing her own thing. They were both harlots, though, because everyone is converted to the grace of God from worldly desires, and nobody can properly boast about any prior justice and its merits. A harlot’s committing fornication is her own doing; her having a son is God’s. All human beings, after all, are fashioned by the one creator God. Nor it is surprising that God works well even in the sins of men and women. After all, even the crime of J...
Now let the other one claim that the gospel is hers, as being owed to her and produced through her. For that is what they were saying to the Gentiles in this dispute, those of the Jews who, while clinging to the letter of the law, dared to call themselves Christians. They were saying that the gospel had come as something owed to them for their justice. But it was not theirs, because they did not know how to grasp its spirit. So they even had the audacity to contend that they were to be called Christians, boasting in someone else’s name like that woman claiming a son she had not borne; and this though by excluding a spiritual understanding from the works of the law they had as it were drained the soul out of the body of their works, and while smothering the live spirit of prophecy had remained attached to their material keeping of the law, which lacked all life, that is to say, spiritual understanding. They wanted to foist all this on the Gentiles too, and take from them, like the livin...
The first idea that occurs to me on consideration is that the two women are the synagogue and the church. For the synagogue is convicted of having killed Christ her son, born of the Jews according to the flesh, in her sleep; that is, by following the light of this present life and not perceiving the revelation of trust in the sayings of the Lord. That is why it is written, “Rise, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you.” That they were two and that they were alone, living in one house, may be taken to mean, without being far-fetched, that besides the circumcision and the uncircumcision there is no other kind of religion to be found in this world. So under the person of one woman you can include the race of circumcised men bound by the worship and the law of one God, while under the person of the other woman you can comprehend all the uncircumcised Gentiles given over to the worship of idols.
But they were both harlots. Well, the apostles say that Jews and Greeks...
As for the royal judgment between the two of them, it simply admonishes us to fight for the truth and to drive hypocrisy away from the spiritual gift of the church like a spurious mother from another woman’s living son and not to let her control the grace granted to others when she could not take care of her own. But let us do this, defending and fighting for the truth without running the risk of division. That decision of the judge, when he ordered the baby to be cut in two, is not meant as a breach of unity but as a test of charity. The name Solomon means peaceable. So a peaceable king does not tear limbs apart that contain the spirit of life in unity and concord. But his threat discovers the true mother, and his judgment sets aside the spurious one. So then, if it comes to this sort of crisis and trial, to prevent the unity of Christian grace from being torn apart, we are taught to say, “Give her the child, only let him live.” The true mother, you see, is not concerned about the hon...
The two women indicate to us the church and the synagogue. The latter, after it tried to suppress the sacrament of human redemption and persecuted and killed the Redeemer through false accusations, claims, nevertheless, that its child should still be alive, that is, that the Jewish people should still be pleasing and acceptable to God and that he should give eternal life to the Mosaic law, which is dead. Since the [synagogue] is soaked in these errors, it perpetually quarrels with the church, which is represented by the other woman. However, the peaceful king settled the argument not by dividing but by gathering the children of both mothers, so that a single body might be created from the Jews and the Gentiles, whose head is Christ. And both mothers assert that they live under the same roof, because the church and the synagogue inhabit this world in dwellings, where they are mixed. - "On the First Book of Kings 3.16"
What about Solomon, who received the gift of wisdom from God and who made his first judgment with the help of a lie? For, in order to elicit the truth that was hidden by a woman’s lie, he himself also made use of a very cleverly thought-out lie when he said, “Bring me a sword, and cut the living infant in two pieces, and give half to one and half to the other.” When this semblance of cruelty profoundly shook the real mother but was praised by the one who was not the mother, he at once, as a result of this most astute discovery of the truth, handed down the sentence that everyone believes was inspired by God: “Give the living infant to this woman,” he said, “and do not let it be slain. This is its mother.” - "Conference 17.25.4"
