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SWOP commentary on
Solomon and the Two Prostitutes

(1 Kings 3:16

This is a story of King Solomon in a context about where it is very ambivalent whether he is the good guy or the bad guy. Because some times it says that he is a bad guy, really bad guy, because he is violating all the norms of Israel, and he what he does means the break up of the kingdom and Israel falls apart after him. So the child is maybe a metaphor for Israel? Then why would they, in that metaphor, be prostitutes?That Israel is born of prostitutes, born of whores? That is a favorite metaphor for Israel whenever they are bad in the bible, to describe it as a prostitute. To describe Israel as a prostitute! I was never told that these two women were prostitutes; I was always told that these two women were mothers. This is a very common story in my life.I’d also forgotten that they were prostitutes. I think that the reason that they are prostitutes is simply to explain why they were living together. Well he just conquered Jerusalem, or his father just conquered Jerusalem and so…so there were probably a lot of impregnated women from the raping and pillaging. So let’s decontextualize the thing, why was it relevant at all that the women were whores? Like over the notion that, isn’t this a motherly thing? We have to assume there was a specific reason that they were named as prostitutes. We have to, it is not just because there were a lot of prostitutes and there happened to be carpenters and prostitutes, factory workers, no? Not just cuz there were so many that it didn’t matter. So what are they even trying to say in the story, we have to figure that one out. So they are whores! They live together, maybe they are lesbians. Lesbians whores! I think what I am getting at is that it is significant that they are mentioned as prostitutes in this story, in a story that I have known since I was four years old, they are only mentioned because it is the only career outside of the family that we have. Because all women that are not invisible are whores. Tell that exact same story and only have it be just two women and not just prostitutes. I mean again why do they even bring the idea up? The reason, in my opinion, that they have to be prostitutes is really clear, because of the fact that you were either with your father or you were with your husband and if you were with your father or your husband you wouldn’t even be allowed an audience with the king.You would be back at the home and your father or your husband would speak for you and put the moral quandary before the king.You’d be at home, you wouldn’t get to talk anyway. Well because, she is a prostitute, because she did not have a husband, now the husband would have ultimate control over that child but because they are prostitutes there is no man speaking here for the children.

People, like really condescending men who interpret this story, say ‘this shows that there was justice in the courts even for the lowly prostitute’ that’s how they take it and that the ‘real true maternal nature will prevail over the fact that they are prostitutes,’ that’s what they say. What feminists say and this is even more interesting, feminists say ‘clearly what the presupposition in this story it that all prostitutes are liars, because he doesn’t even question them. Why question a liar?’ You can’t trust them. You can’t trust them so you may as well be violent. Yeah, they had to be of ill moral character to be willing to go and steal another woman’s baby and replace it with a dead one. Well, I’ve come to say there is an essence of heroism within our prostitutes in the bible so far. And they also are especially good girls because they give up something or they martyr or they go along with the power blah blah. So yeah, even in the stories we can take that, like, essence that’s in there, of heroism that is truly in both stories and we can then own it and magnify it, or, on the other hand… well, wait a minute, we can go with the feminists, what those people say or we might emphasize the something else, the bad parts, the hatred, the hatred...the fact that the bible doesn’t like the prostitutes. Now, so we could go the other way and say the heroism is good.But I still say that the overriding situation in this is that it is ridiculous that this king is going to cut the baby in half! Yeah, it was a bluff. It’s still abusive and it’s still sick. To even take then, to turn around and say you wanna push the heroism of a prostitute in a story that really should be focused on this violence….

More reasonable would have been a story of two women who weren’t prostitutes, two women friends living together, had the two babies, one dies and the one whose child didn’t die would be in empathy and would be “oh my god, you poor thing you lost your child why don’t we share mine?” but they wouldn’t tell it that way they want to keep the women divided, that the women didn’t care for each other. Maybe, maybe he befitted from the women being divided. Well because he could give that baby to someone, that’s what they do now, they sell our children, they take our children from us they say we’re incompetent and they sell them! They want mother’s to be totally selfless. Martyrs; Martyrdom! Women are martyrs. We have Rahab who gives up her whole town to save her family. And now were talking about another woman who will give up her own fucking child. Martyrs! And if she is knowledgeable about how justice is being doled out up to that point, who’s to say she is not being manipulative of what the likely outcome would be?I felt bad for the woman who, I felt bad for both women. Cuz of my mom and because of her issues, and because of her loosing me into the, and I went into the foster care system and all that, so for me, it had some pretty heavy duty significance and I was always, my sister and I were always being separated in that way, ya know, or because I was always being fought over because I was almost adopted by my foster mother.And my mother fought for me, so you get that I have a lot of that, I just felt incredible empathy for both women. I remember hearing that in church and thinking, there is not a lot of empathy going on for either women. Really. And am like you, ya know, I am one of those people who is always for the underdog and I really felt that the women who is being seen as not the real mother, was maybe not getting very much empathy. And I thought, that kind of sucks! But that woman is suffering she is pain, her baby died, she is in pain and she is suffering and at this point she knows she has lost. OK she is in there and it’s a loss, the guy is going to cut this baby in half, and give the two pieces to them, she has already, she has lost, she has lost, so she says yes, ya know she has already lost her baby and it is gone.So she figures that neither one will get the baby. It is like a no win situation. So it is trying to figure out the best way to work in the situation that is already bad. Why couldn’t she be trumping his card? Maybe she is a mother who is fighting back. One of them said ‘go ahead stupid shit cut him in half.’ What about the Daisy Anarchy mothers? Daisy Anarchy is a resistance fighter!OK come on, there is a fight, it is a fight for justice. He is allowed to even suggest murdering a baby with out being a bad guy but if she calls his bluff she is an evil mother. I was thinking, why aren’t they going strait to jail for reporting themselves as prostitutes? I want to know why does he let a prostitute have a child? Because the culture I live in basically takes children away from prostitutes. The first thing that struck me when I was a little girl was, the prostitute gets to keep her baby? This culture, our government, operates as the husband and takes the children away if you’re a prostitute. So I actually thought this is a bit of a more progressive culture, isn’t it?Because the baby gets to stay with its mom. The prostitute was allowed to keep her child. Now, I don’t know if maybe they felt that they had a social system where they could say ‘well you’re the child of a prostitute or you’re a bastard child so therefore we’re not worried about prostitutes having children because their children will never become part of accepted society.’ And that seems to be, ya know, when you think about the Pharisees and the big bone that Christ had to pick with them it was about how they would wash their hands up to their elbows and they wouldn’t touch unclean people and they tried to set themselves apart. They also had circumcision again as another way to set oneself apart through body and cleanliness. And it seems to me that we still live here in 2005 in a time where people want to have a separation between what they consider clean and dirty. And prostitutes are dirty so the most important thing really is not about eradicating us, because this culture, even the Catholic Church said ‘you gotta have sewers,’ um but rather to keep the sewer where it belongs. When I first read that story what I remember is feeling physical pain. That this powerful man that is supposed to be close to God would suggest such a thing. And I also felt overwhelmed because the patriarchs, I didn’t have that term, but the older men, always get to do things that are bad and it is still good and that is what I always walked away with. How can he? Oh, OK, its not bad because wasn’t really going to do it, is that it? But he made these women afraid and it was a horrible thing to even suggest. Yeah, no, so but the same word for awe in Hebrew, is fear. And so you could interpret it as “all of Israel was terrified by the king.” And if you interpret it that way then it’s like ‘OK I am not going to go to his court…I am going to just stay away from the authorities.’ That makes a lot more sense than being impressed! But they went before him with this argument. they took the argument to him.So there was that much trust. I mean, I don’t know that I would take my argument to an invading conqueror that I didn’t trust. So this one woman who needed justice, they went there somehow, they went before him with this argument ya know, it is pretty crazy you’d think that there was some other way. Don’t go to fucking Solomon and those assholes to make our judgments; we need a fucking fairer court! I wouldn’t take my shit to the courts to decide it either!

I don’t think that Solomon is the hero. No, the mother is the hero. But historically, he is the one everybody rejoiced over, Solomon’s decision.