SOLOMON’S PROSTITUTES

“¹⁹ During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him. ²⁰ So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I, your servant, was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast. ²¹ The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t the son I had borne.” [1 Kings 3]

I know you used to flee Sunday school to buy fanpop if you don’t recognise this scripture😂. This is a popular story that comes right after Solomon’s dream in which he asks for wisdom when God gives him a blank cheque. It appears this story was intended to be evidence of the receipt of this supernatural wisdom – discovering what is seemingly the truth of a series of facts that could otherwise never have been discovered, because there were no other witnesses other than the two women who testified before Solomon that day.

This is a story of two women before King Solomon who were clamouring over a child. You should be familiar with this story (I hope?😅). Here’s what seems to have been lost in the telling and re-telling of that story:

That the two women were prostitutes.

Yup. Maybe because Sunday-school teachers didn’t want to have to explain to a bunch of toddlers what prostitutes meant, talk less of what they did😆. But being the first time I was truly paying attention to the text, I naturally had a bunch of questions running through my mind.

It is interesting what one Olumuyiwa Anthony Omodunbi writes in a paper he titles ‘The King and the Two Prostitutes’:

Adele Berlin notes that the purpose of character description in the Bible is ‘to enable the reader to situate the character in terms of his place in society…to tell what kind of person (s)he is.

If the narrator was not satisfied with describing them simply as women but decided to go ahead and call them prostitutes, it is a call for the reader to pay attention. Understanding the character of a prostitute in the social-cultural milieu of the text will play a major role in evaluating the speeches of the women.

It makes sense, and I hoped that the several papers and commentaries I read would provide some perspective to the questions that were running through my mind. Sadly, none did. In actual fact, the more I read, the more my questions gained muscle strength in my mind.

1. What business did prostitutes have trying to keep a baby, considering that it typically would have been a rude intrusion of their business?
2. How were prostitutes bold enough to present their squabbling publicly?
3. How were they even allowed before the king, given that prostitution was forbidden by the Law of Moses?
4. Was it perhaps for the fear of being accused of having killed her own child that the accusing mother had tried to claim the living child?
5. But then again, it is obvious from her willingness to see the living child killed that her interest was not in having a child, but the mere fact that she did not have hers while her ‘friend’ with whom she shared a flat still did.

Omodunbi adds in his paper:

In ancient Jewish literature, the socio-cultural assumptions about prostitutes are such that their credibility is immediately in question. They are women of “ill-repute” or women who “turn tricks”, so to speak, deceitful women who simply cannot be trusted.

Hence, if prostitutes are understood as those whose words may not always be trusted and they could manipulate situations for their self-interest, the reader sees them as potentially unreliable characters whose speeches are not to be taken at face value. The narrator thus seems to hint to the reader to be on guard and look out for inconsistency in their speech.

Right? Because is it not fascinating that this mother seemed to have ‘seen’ enough to testify about, when she was supposed to be so deep in sleep that she did not see the other mother take her child? Because obviously if she had caught her in the act, it would not have culminated in her waking up in the morning to attempt to breastfeed her child only to find him dead.

Yet somehow, she saw enough to know that the other prostitute lay on her son, got up not only during the night but in the middle of the night😂 and took her son from her side while she slept. She was so sure that she had to ‘look at him closely in the morning light’ before realising that the dead child wasn’t her son. Unless the children were identical twins, this woman’s story already doesn’t add up😂.

In Deuteronomy 23:18 [AMP], the scripture says:

‘You shall not bring the wages of a prostitute or the price of a dog [that is, a male prostitute] into the house of the Lord your God as payment for any vow, for both of these [the gift and the giver] are utterly repulsive to the Lord your God.’

A young woman who represented herself as a virgin who was later discovered not to be one was considered to have been whoring [Deuteronomy 22:21]:

They shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

Leviticus 21:9 says:

If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.

[Perhaps we should interrogate the political correctness and intention/relevance of these laws sometime].

The point I’m making with these scriptures is: how on earth did these women get audience before the king? And really, what interest did they have attempting to keep a child if they would still try to earn a living in the same manner?

And although I have no direct answers to these questions, I had a conversation with a smarty-pants human being who shared some extremely profound perspectives on what he thought could be the import of the story.

PERSPECTIVES

What Was It That Made Prostitutes Want to Keep a Child?

Lessons From the Sacrificial Mother

He talks about the pride and inherent jealousy that inadvertently unveils itself when a thing/person produces after itself – when a person replicates himself, makes another being in their image, literally creates an extension of themselves. He speaks of the sturdy jealousy that fights to guard that recreation, so much so that prostitutes who had no business seeking to preserve their seed would publicly clamour and possibly lay down their lives (knowing the consequences of prostitution) in preservation and protection of this recreation that had been made in their image.

And then he asks a beautiful question – if even prostitutes would go to this extent to preserve their own, how much more would God not clamour for the ones He has made in His image? Does it then not make sense that God asks ‘can a woman forget her nursing child or have no compassion for the child of her womb? She may forget, but I will not forget you!’ [Isaiah 49:15].

Or that Jude 24 says that He is ‘able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy…’?

Does John 10:28 & 29 suddenly not take on more flesh when Jesus says of His sheep, ‘I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand?!

If a prostitute would fight this hard for her seed, I cannot fathom how much the Father would fight for His own. Enter into His rest, friend.

Lessons From the Accusing Mother

If there’s anything to learn from the accusing mother, it is this – that the natural inclination to protect things that are dear to you jealously is very different from the diligence it takes to hold on to that thing. And this is true of any ‘seed’ held by any man (be it a business idea, a creative piece, or that thing that holds your passion).

There is a contrast between the jealousy to have, and the lack of care to hold; and until a man applies himself to diligence and intentional nurturing, that idea, that gift, that ‘seed’ may die right before his very eyes.

The beautiful distinction between the accusing woman’s negligence and the love of the mother of the living child was that the latter was willing to give up this child for whom she had so much compassion, if only it meant that he would live.

What would be the true test of real diligence in your proclivity to preserve anything dear to you then is your preparedness to give it up for the sake of protecting it. And in my friend’s exact words:

‘The true test of the growth and the measure of that which you have diligence to hold is your capacity to allow it to be nurtured in the way that best puts that idea or that seed of yours in its best path to survival’.

[Yes, I recorded him😎; that’s how good it was😁. And yeah, I did it for you😁].

And so Jesus tells His disciples:

‘whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’ [Matthew 16:25]

The true test of whether or not I have overcome my selfishness as a ‘prostitute’ is whether I am able to give up what is mine for the guarantee of the survival of that very thing, even to the detriment of my pleasure and satisfaction.

And finally, within this conclusion is an unspoken implication – that God may withhold from us such things as may have ensured our abundance and exuberance, if it means ensuring that we are in, and remain, in a place of survival, knowing that clinging on the former may lead to our eventual destruction.

Until Next Time…

I am reminded of the words of the Spirit of the One who gave up His Son that we may have life – we know that notwithstanding what comes our way, we are persuaded, that neither death nor life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, nor things to come, height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord [Romans 8:39].

Love,

Rad!💝