1 Kings 3:21
And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear.
The verse belongs to the larger account in 1 Kings 3:16-28 in which a helpless infant is restored to its unfortunate mother. It records the mother rising in the morning to nurse her child, finding it dead, and on careful examination in the morning recognizing it was not the son she had borne. The surrounding episode displays Solomon's wisdom and sympathy in his early reign in resolving the case. His action in saving the living child proves his allegiance to God, his self-mastery, his moral efficiency, his fine sensibilities, and his unseared conscience. The episode marks the height from which he later fell when communication with idolaters separated him from God and became his ruin, so that he who had saved a living child sank so low as to consent to erecting an idol to whom living children were offered as sacrifices.