What did Solomon ask God for?

A dream at Gibeon

The scene comes early in Solomon’s reign, in 1 Kings 3. The Temple does not exist yet, so the king goes to Gibeon, “the great high place,” and offers a thousand burnt offerings on its altar (1 Kings 3:4). Chronicles explains the choice: the old Tent of Meeting that Moses had made in the wilderness stood there (2 Chronicles 1:3). That night God appears to him in a dream with an open offer: “Ask for what I should give you” (1 Kings 3:5).

Gibeon is today’s al-Jib, in the West Bank, about ten kilometers northwest of Jerusalem. In the late 1950s the American archaeologist James Pritchard excavated a great pool cut into the rock there, with a spiral stair down its side, and jar handles inscribed with the town’s name. Joshua had cried “Sun, stand still on Gibeon!” there (Joshua 10:12).

“I am just a little child”

Solomon begins with modesty. God kept faith with David, he says, and gave him a son on his throne. “I am just a little child. I don’t know how to go out or come in” (1 Kings 3:7). Going out and coming in is an old Hebrew way of saying to lead, the way a commander takes his troops out and brings them home. Then comes the request.

Give your servant therefore an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to judge this great people of yours?

In Hebrew “an understanding heart” is lev shomea, literally a listening heart. In the Bible the heart is where a person thinks and decides, not only where he feels. So Solomon asks for a mind that listens, and he asks for it as a judge. In his world the king was the last court of appeal, and justice was the job.

What God gave him

God is pleased with what Solomon left out. You “have not asked for yourself long life, nor have you asked for riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the life of your enemies,” God tells him (1 Kings 3:11). So he receives what he asked, “a wise and understanding heart,” and more.

I have also given you that which you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you for all your days.

Long life comes with a condition: if he walks in God’s ways, “then I will lengthen your days” (3:14). Solomon wakes, “and behold, it was a dream,” and goes up to Jerusalem to sacrifice before the Ark. In the retelling in Chronicles he asks for “wisdom and knowledge” (2 Chronicles 1:10). The condition matters later: the end of his story turns on it (how Solomon’s life ended).

The gift put to the test

The very next story shows the gift at work. Two women share a house, both give birth, one baby dies, and both claim the living one. There are no witnesses. Solomon calls for a sword and orders the child divided. The real mother begs him to give the baby to the other woman rather than kill it, and by that cry the king knows her (1 Kings 3:16–27).

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.

The next chapter measures his wisdom “like the sand that is on the seashore” (1 Kings 4:29). He speaks of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of a wall, and of animals, birds, creeping things and fish (4:33). Wisdom here is practical: judging, governing, naming the world.