A Wise Ruling: “The lips of a king speak as an oracle,” Proverbs 16:10 tells us, “and his mouth should not betray (or ‘act treacherously against’) justice.” Quite so. For the king is the hub around which the whole legal process revolves. He is the highest court of appeal and the foundation of all administration and justice. To invent a proverb: if the core is rotten, then there is no hope for the apple (cf. Prov. 28:15–16; 29:2). Yet the picture that we have of Solomon in 1 Kings 1–2 has indeed raised the question of whether he has not hitherto “betrayed” justice in his dealings with certain of his subjects, and our reading of 3:1–15 has also suggested it. First Kings 3:16–28 now wishes us to see how the new wisdom he has just received from God makes all the difference in his ability to “d…