1 Kings 3:19

Study note

Setting — A woman addresses King Solomon in Gibeah, recounting the events of the previous night after she gave birth and shared a room with another woman. She explains that during the night, the other woman's son died when she rolled over onto him.

The words — The Hebrew verb וַיָּ֛מָת (va-yā-māt) translates literally as "and he died," while the phrase שָכְבָ֖ה עָלָֽי/ו (šāḵḇāh ʿālāyw) means "she lay upon him." These terms anchor the physical cause of the infant's death in the woman's narrative.

The thread — The immediate context of 1 Kings 3:18–20 frames this death as the catalyst for a disputed paternity claim, while the broader narrative of 1 Kings 3:16–28 shows how such maternal testimony brings a royal judgment into the open. The text uses the reported death to establish the stakes of Solomon's wisdom.

Why it lands — The verse demands a reader to weigh a mother's desperate account against the physical reality of a child's death. It requires the listener to discern truth from deception when human testimony and royal authority intersect.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.