Bible Strands
1 Kings 3:20
So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I was asleep. She laid him in her bosom and put her dead son at my bosom.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — A mother addresses King Solomon, recounting how she awoke to find her living child replaced by another woman’s dead infant. Her statement occurs during Solomon’s judicial examination of the dispute.
The words — The text isolates וַ/תִּקַּח (va./ti.Kach), translated “and she took,” and מֵֽ/אֶצְלִ֗/י (me./'etz.L/i), translated “from beside me.” These terms literally describe the physical removal of the child while the speaker lay asleep.
The thread — The pattern of covert nighttime action and concealed deeds recurs in Matthew 13:25, where an enemy sows weeds while men sleep, and in John 3:20, which states that evildoers avoid the light to keep their actions hidden.
Why it lands — The verse plainly describes a desperate deception executed under darkness to secure a child. It requires a reader to confront how fear and urgency can drive deliberate concealment, and to recognize that such hidden acts ultimately stand before judgment.
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.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom.
Cross-references
- John 3:20 Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
- Job 24:13 Then there are those who rebel against the light, not knowing its ways or staying on its paths.
- Matthew 13:25 But while everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and slipped away.
- Psalms 139:11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me”—