1 Kings — Chapter 3

Solomon's marriage to Pharaoh's daughter: Lapide notes this was lawful if she converted to the faith, as did Ruth, Rahab, and others. He notes the Canticle of Canticles alludes to this marriage: \"I have compared thee to my company of horsemen in Pharaoh's chariots\" — but its mystical sense is the union of Christ with the Church.

The high places: Lapide gives a learned discussion of \"excelsa\" — groves and high places used for sacrifice. Those used for false gods were manifestly illicit. Those used for the true God were tolerated before the Temple was built, but after its completion, kings who permitted them fell short of full obedience to God.

Solomon goes to Gabaon to sacrifice: Lapide: \"Note the piety of Solomon, who begins his reign with the worship and invocation of God; he offered a thousand holocausts, and therefore obtained from God a wisdom so great that God granted the like to no one else.\"

God appears to Solomon in a dream — \"Ask what thou wilt that I should give thee\": Lapide gives an extended discussion of whether Solomon had full use of reason in this dream. He concludes, following Suarez and many Fathers, that this was a prophetic vision, not a mere natural dream — God raised Solomon's intellect and phantasy to full rational use even in sleep, as with other prophets.

Solomon: \"I am but a child, and know not how to go out and come in\": Lapide: \"I am very young, rude, and inexperienced, therefore like a child for the burden of governing so great a people.\" Solomon was about twenty years old. The Hebrew phrase means \"I do not know how to conduct myself in the administration of so great a kingdom.\"

Give therefore to thy servant an understanding heart: Lapide: By wisdom Solomon properly sought prudence — the practical and ethical wisdom by which he might govern himself and the people. He sought, as Wisdom ix says, \"the assistant of Thy throne, that she may be with me and labour with me.\" Wisdom in the Sapiential books chiefly signifies practical wisdom teaching us to live justly and holily.

I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, so that there hath been no one like thee before thee: Lapide explains the multiple kinds of wisdom given: first, ethical and political; second, natural philosophy, medicine, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, architecture; third, supernatural theological wisdom and the gift of prophecy. All this wisdom was infused directly by God on that night.

And the things also which thou didst not ask, I have given thee: riches and glory: Lapide: \"Learn here how great a good and gift of God is wisdom, how much it is to be preferred above all other things, and that it draws all things else along with it. For wisdom is to be obtained by prayer more than by study. The author and giver of wisdom is God, who is the Father of lights.\"

Solomon awoke and understood it was a dream: Lapide: not a common natural dream, but a divine prophetic vision — for God truly infused wisdom into him at that moment, and the Scriptures recount all that followed as truly done, not merely dreamed. The parallel in 2 Chronicles says simply \"God appeared to him.\"

The judgment of Solomon: The true mother's compassion — \"her bowels were moved\" — reveals the true mother. Lapide applies this morally and mystically. The Church like the true mother would rather give up the child than see it destroyed by division.