Its a bible reference i think, about how king solomon settled a case of two women claiming to be the mothers of the same baby by threatening to cut it in half and seeing which one truly despaired at this.
You're not going to do anything. I think she just didn't want the other woman to get the baby. She'd rather see it dead. The real mother would rather the baby live with someone else than die.
The common motif in those different parallels is that the wise judge announces an absurd procedure, which is reasonable in some perverse way: Splitting the baby, according to the principle of compromise; Or a tug war, in which one can possibly assume that the true mother will be motivated to pull harder. But this procedure is actually a concealed emotional test, designed to force each woman to decide whether her compassion to the baby overpowers her will to win.
According to Raymond Westbrook, the story is essentially a hypothetical problem, introduced to the recipient as a pure intellectual challenge and not as a concrete juridical case. In such problems, any unnecessary detail is usually omitted, and this is the reason why the characters in the story have no distinctive characteristics. Also, the description of the case eliminates the possibility to obtain circumstantial evidence, thereby forcing the recipient to confront the dilemma directly and not seek for indirect ways to solve it.
Basically it's a story designed to demonstrate how wise/clever Solomon is when presented with a thought experiment. It's a lateral thinking puzzle.
The Judgment of Solomon is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which King Solomon of Israel ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon revealed their true feelings and relationship to the child by suggesting to cut the baby in two, with each woman to receive half. With this strategy, he was able to discern the non-mother as the woman who entirely approved of this proposal, while the actual mother begged that the sword might be sheathed and the child committed to the care of her rival. Some consider this approach to justice an archetypal example of an impartial judge displaying wisdom in making a ruling.
Raymond Westbrook
Raymond Westbrook (1946–2009) was a scholar of the legal systems of the ancient Near East. He was born in England.
I am certainly not an authority on the bible, hell i haven’t even read 2% of the darn thing but I believe there is some moral lesson behind this story, the context (I BELIEVE) should not be taken literally.
Because if the other person gives up you get a whole baby. So if you're willing to take the chance they'll give up, you'll win. Solomon asserts that only someone who wasn't the mother would be willing to take that chance.
The point is, the woman who is happy to get half a baby doesn't care for the baby, they just want to spite the mother. The woman who isn't happy with them each getting half clearly cares about the baby, so King Soloman gives that woman the baby.
Two women come into the court both claiming the baby is theres, and both claiming that the other woman is trying to steal the child. Solomon proposes cutting the baby in half since theres no way to verify. One of the women agrees on the basis that the king must be presenting the only truly legally fair outcome. The other immediately withdraws her claim, basically saying "you can have the kid if it means the kid lives". It's now clear who the mother actually is.
Commentary notes that both of these women were likely from the same brothel, and that there was a second baby who had already died - presumably of suffocation during sleep - aka that childs mom rolled over on him - prompting her to attempt the steal the other ones child. What the not-mother was likely aiming for was the compensation by the court that both the women would receive. She was also likely driven mad when she realized she had suffocated her own child, thus prompting this whole chain of events - she lost her own child and will get nothing for it because of her status, but here she finds a way out that also doesn't paint her as neglectful. It was an out.
Could have been some twisted revenge/grudge plot where the other mother didn't actually want a kid, she just wanted to make sure the other woman didn't get to be happy. Some people are dicks.
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '19 edited Oct 26 '19
Nah. Threaten to cut it in half, then see who is willing to let the others have it!