Judgment of Solomon

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

You're either the ruler of the land, or someone else whose job is to arbitrate between people. Either way, you have a problem. There is an object whose true ownership is under dispute. Alice says it is hers, and Bob says it is his. This is usually a living thing, such as a baby. How do you figure out the true owner? Threaten to destroy the object (usually by cutting it in half and giving one half to each claimant).

In the end, Alice would rather see it given up to Bob than have it destroyed, and Bob is all too happy to receive it. Alice is the real owner, revealed by her compassion.

A common variation is logic puzzles is to have both parties already agreeing to split something that is inherently difficult to split fairly, but not being able to agree on the exact method. The most common solution is to have one party split it up; and then have the second party decide which piece they want.

Often subverted nowadays. Compare Disney Dog Fight and Spot the Imposter.

Examples of Judgment of Solomon include:

Anime and Manga

  • Subverted in the All There in the Manual portions of Martian Successor Nadesico. In a competition to see who would get custody of Ruri, Prospector asks Yurika and Minato to each grab an arm and pull. When Minato lets go first (after Ruri cries in pain), Prospector awards custody to Yurika, because she would never let Ruri go.
  • Subverted in Ranma ½. Akane and Shampoo try to drag Ranma in different directions, and Mousse says it reminds him of a story about an old ruler who, when presented with two mothers fighting over a baby, told the mothers to have a tug of war, with the winner getting the child. But the mother's love was strong in both of them... so the child was ripped apart and nobody lived happily ever after.

Comic Books

  • Subverted in a story from the Batman: No Man's Land bat-crossover with an actual baby that two women lay claim to, but neither of whom is the child's real mother, who entrusted the child to the first woman when she (the mother) was near death and when she set the baby down to get something, the second woman found the baby and assumed the first woman had abandoned it. The "real" and "false" mother both react with horror at Batman's suggestion. Batman's second proposal is that if they care about the child they can learn to look after it together, since in No Man's Land, everyone needs to stick together to survive. This gets through to them and they learn to become friends.
  • Spoofed/subverted in Promethea
  • Subverted in a recent[when?] She Hulk comic - Shulkie, at the time, was being some form of cosmic judge, and was brought a case in which the two (alien) parents were contesting custody of the child. She thinks to herself 'oh, it's the Judgment of Solomon', and orders that the child be cut in half, expecting the trope to play out as it did originally. The alien father takes her literally, and cuts the child in two. She's horrified, until someone points out her brilliance, since the species concerned can regenerate from this, and the parents end up with a child each.
  • Larry Gonick explained the symbolism of the story in his The Cartoon History of the Universe, revealing it to be a political parable; Solomon (the false mother) was the illegitimate king, and Adonijah's family (the true mother) were the rightful rulers. Solomon was willing to divide Israel (the baby) with civil war unless Adonijah's family ceded their claim to the throne.
  • Subverted in La Biblia Contada a los Pasotas, a Spanish comic-book adaptation of The Bible. King Solomon uses this trick but only to walk near both candidates and watch them closely. He identifies the biological mother because she has the same eye color as the baby.
  • Subverted horrifyingly by the Emperor in Fables. When asked by two brothers to rule on a dispute caused by the fact that they disagree on how to administrate the land they inherited but can't divide it on their own, instead of granting the division, the Emperor says that because strong families are the foundation of the Empire, he will remove the material things that separate the brothers. I.E. commanding that the land and property be forfeited to the Empire and the servants and tenants of the land killed.

Film

  • Done in Lawrence of Arabia though the possession in dispute was Tribal Honor rather then a material one. An Arab warrior from one tribe murders one from another. To fend off the dispute Lawrence personally carries out the execution because he has no local connections and therefore no one can take offense.

Literature

  • King Solomon does this with a baby, making it Older Than Feudalism. Note, however, that the original tale can actually be seen as a parable, as Solomon was at war with one of his brothers at the time; the baby was Israel, the sword was war, Solomon was the false mother and his brother was represented by the real mother. The message was "If you don't want me to split the kingdom, give it up." It worked.
    • Wait, so if the real Solomon represents the false mother, who represents the king Solomon from the parable?
      • 1. It's not a perfect metaphor. 2. He was both the false mother and the sword.
      • Or, alternatively, Solomon was playing to his brother's pride. In the story, Solomon gives the baby to the mother who would give it up to save it (thus proving, by her greater love for the child, that she's the true mother). Thus, the message he's sending to his brother is "Okay, so you think you're the rightful ruler of Israel? Well, God is just, right? So if you simply give up the kingdom to me now you'll save us both a lot of misery, and if you're actually the rightful king then God will find a way to give the crown back to you anyway."
  • Discworld:
    • King Pteppic makes this judgement with a cow in Pyramids. However his ruling is "interpreted" by the overbearing High Priest Dios, who gives ownership of the cow to the more pious man, and adds that it should be sacrificed to the gods immediately.
    • A variant in Lords and Ladies: To test who's the greater witch, Granny Weatherwax and her young rival both attempt to out-stare the sun. A child in the audience screams, and Granny immediately turns to check that he's okay. The challenger protests that she won the challenge, but the rest of the village agrees that a great witch is someone who'll set a child's welfare above some petty competition.
      • It's worth noting that Granny would probably have won the contest hands down, had she not spent the night holding back the elves inadvertently summoned by the young rival.
  • Subverted in the Myth Adventures novel Hit and Myth, where Skeeve (disguised as King Roderick) makes the ruling during a dispute over a cat.

This was supposed to inspire them to settle their difference with a quick compromise. Instead, they thanked me for my wisdom, shook hands, and left smiling, presumably to carve up the cat.

  • Used in Leo Frankowski's Cross-Time Engineer series. Conrad Stargard, the titular engineer, becomes a feudal lord, and and is asked to arbitrate a dispute. A man and his neighbor each owned a pig, and one day, they only found one pig. They both claim it is theirs. Conrad agrees with both of them, and tells them the court cost from each of them is half a pig. They divide the pig between them, and later give Conrad the other pig when it is found.
  • Played straight in Book V of The Faerie Queene, when Arthegall, Knight of Justice, arbitrates a dispute between a squire and a knight over a woman (who is apparently incapable of telling them herself). It turns out the knight kidnapped the woman (and killed his own girlfriend when she objected to his running off with her) and is subsequently sentenced to carry her severed head around for a year as punishment.

Live-Action TV

  • Done in an episode of Dinosaurs, in which the baby is literally cut in half and then put together in a weird cross between this trope and Vegas-style stage magic.
  • Subverted in The Cosby Show of all things. Rudy and Olivia are arguing over who gets to play with a toy. Vanessa suggests cutting it in half, so Rudy and Olivia then argue over who gets which half!
  • Used in an episode of Seinfeld, when Kramer is decided to be the true owner of a bicycle (as he didn't want to see it ruined) when Newman uses this logic to decide whether the true owner is Kramer or Elaine (who was fed up with the entire argument and willing to take half of the bike).
  • Double-subverted in What It's Like Being Alone, when Sammy tries to settle an argument between Brian's robot parents. First, they argue over who gets which half. And then it turns out that Sammy wasn't trying for this trope anyway, and just wanted to see Brian get cut in half.
  • Salute Your Shorts: ZZ and Dina each claim ownership of a frog, Wartbreath. Budnick, acting as counselor, follows the Ooka Tadasuke example and gives the frog to ZZ when she lets Dina take Wartbreath because he could see "ZZ couldn't bear to harm the little croaker." However, he confesses the handbook he took the idea from "would have given the frog to Dina. This was my answer."
  • Not strictly a cut-in-half situation, but done to some extent in an episode of Season Three of Angel, when vampire hunter Holtz takes Angel's child hostage and threatens to kill him unless Angel agrees to let him take the baby away. Angel, the boy's true father, agrees, preferring to have him raised by someone else than to have him die. This distinction becomes important later in the season, when the boy comes to see Holtz, the man who was willing to kill him rather than see him raised by someone else, as his father.
  • Discussed in Law and Order SVU. In a case concerning the custody of a child, Stabler mentions King Solomon, and the DA counters that she can't literally split the child. Stabler points out Solomon didn't have to.
  • An episode of ER had a doctor resolving a dispute between two cheese-rollers by presenting the prize, a wheel of cheese, to the competitor who would rather forfeit his chance at victory than let the cheese be damaged. As he prepares to present the cheese wheel to the winner, he sees that one of his colleagues has already cut a slice from the cheese and made himself a sandwich.

Newspaper Comics

  • Even the classic comic strip Doonesbury found time to do this. Ambassador Duke was the Solomonic figure, and he even references the original:

Duke: I believe there is a biblical precedent... and a solution... I've got it! We'll cut the baby in half!

  • Subverted in FoxTrot. Jason and Paige are arguing over an object, until their mother has finally had enough, and suggests they remember what Solomon said. "Something about cutting children in half." The two immediately try to foist the object on each other.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myth and Legend

  • Among the legendary stories of the wise Japanese judge Ooka Tadasuke is one where he must figure out the true mother of a baby. He asks each woman to grab an arm of the baby and tells them he is sure the real mother would find the strength to win a tug of war. Actually, much like Solomon, he figured the real mother would refuse to harm the child. Both women are too smart to fall for it and he has to figure out another way.

Tabletop Games

  • A handful of Magic: The Gathering cards play like the puzzle variation, where one player splits a group of cards into piles that the other must choose to use/keep or discard. Arguably the most famous of these cards is Fact or Fiction.

Theatre

  • Bertolt Brecht also does this with a child at the end of his play The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In his version, the woman who is willing to give up the child rather than see him harmed is not the biological mother.

Video Games

  • Spoofed in Jade Empire: the Black Whirlwind regales how he intervened in a romantic dispute over a woman by doing this. He didn't threaten to cut the girl in half, he just came out and did it. He's just that kinda guy.
  • One of the quests in Dungeon Siege III has you settle a land dispute between a Goblin baron and a human landowner. You can tell them to just split the land and deal with it and they'll agree, though neither are terribly happy about it (and the Goblin notes that this is a coward's choice).

Web Comics

Western Animation

Solomon/Homer: The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive...death. I'll eat the pie.

    • There were also Ned Flander's ultra-gory retelling of Bible stories that had Solomon actually cutting the baby in half himself before either can say anything, and then killing himself after he realized what he just did. By cutting himself in half.
    • This trope inspired Reverend Lovejoy to come up with a solution when he and his wife were fighting with Homer and Marge over a mattress that somehow seems to invigorate the sex life of any couple that sleeps in it. Marge's only complaint was that Lovejoy cut the mattress diagonally, making it look like a grilled cheese sandwhich.
  • Susie Carmichael from Rugrats used this method in a Rugrats comic story where Tommy was arguing with Angelica over custody of his star ball.
    • There's an episode with a subversion: Angelica's jurisdiction over Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil is usurped by a rival baby at the park, leading to a lengthy power struggle until he eventually suggests that they "split" the four of them. Angelica considers this and asks, "Who gets the heads?" The rival explains that he meant they would each take two of them, prompting a fit of outraged pride from Angelica, who says they're all hers and she's not settling for half.
  • Subverted on Recess with a doll. In a prelude to a very terrible rule, Gus, sitting in for King Bob, gives the doll to the wrong girl, since the real owner insisted she'd rather see the doll with the other girl than have it cut in two. His advisers point this out, but cheer him up by pointing out that he made the second-best possible decision...of two possible decisions.
  • Parodied in an episode of Histeria! King Solomon gets presented with the two women claiming to be the mother, and he suggests (like in the original) cutting the baby in half. Both women react with disgust, declare they're not the mother, and leave, forcing Solomon to take ownership of the baby. To make it worse, neither of the two women claimed to be the mother in the first place; Solomon's guards just picked up two random women off the street.
  • One episode of American Dragon: Jake Long shows Jake attempting to negotiate between two tribes of fairies over custody of a magic apple (the tree that the apple grew on is in one tribe's territory, but the apple itself hangs over the other tribe's territory). When he suggests splitting it, both sides protest because doing so would destroy its magical properties. Jake's grandpa then steps in and quells the discussion by eating the apple.
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