Solomon's Wisdom in Practice: Justice

Solomon's love of wisdom has been an inspiration to me over the years. It seems that God heard and honored his prayer for wisdom, since Solomon's desire was to bless his people. 

The first time we see Solomon's wisdom in action is in the courtroom. The king was asked to judge a case where one woman had accused another of kidnapping her baby because the (alleged) kidnapper's baby had died; the other woman in return said that her accuser was lying, that the accuser's baby had died. Cases in which there are no other witnesses -- only the accuser and counter-accuser -- are notoriously hard to judge. There have been times in history when a case like that might be denied a hearing for lack of witnesses. One woman was losing her child -- an irreparable harm -- but what proof did she have? 

Those familiar with the account will know that Solomon devised a test: he suggested that the living child be cut in two and divided between the women. The accused thought those terms were acceptable, but the accuser said she would rather lose the child than have it die. So by that test, Solomon was able to discern which woman was truly the mother of the living child, and returned the baby to the mother. 

I'm not confident how the test would have appeared to Solomon's contemporaries thousands of years ago. Was it making a point that there is a kind of so-called justice that is barbaric and harsh, which does not deserve to be called justice? That account shows that true justice brings restoration, that true wisdom brings clarity. It shows that wisdom does not settle for an appearance of justice (a mockery of fairness in which everyone loses equally); wisdom persists until it can reach righteousness. And the two women were said to be prostitutes. To the people who heard this told thousands of years ago, did it send a message that nobody in the kingdom was beyond the king's protection, that justice was extended even to the most poor and outcast? Justice here shows itself as a blessing to ordinary people in their daily lives, and one of the pillars of a prosperous kingdom.