And 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 judgment.

The wisdom of God and the wisdom of Man: these two were understood to be both inseparable and fearsome. Any man fit to be King must have been prepared to make such judgments, to rule that a child must be sacrificed if doing so was likely to unravel the threads of deception binding the truth of a case.

But then, would such an action be moral if the wisdom of God were not understood to underlie it? Or did the wisdom of God necessarily accompany so daring and successful a resolution of the dispute? These are questions that we cannot answer now, if they ever had answers.

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