1 Kings 3:22

The first idea that occurs to me on consideration is that the two women are the synagogue and the church. For the synagogue is convicted of having killed Christ her son, born of the Jews according to the flesh, in her sleep; that is, by following the light of this present life and not perceiving the revelation of trust in the sayings of the Lord. That is why it is written, "Rise, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you." That they were two and that they were alone, living in one house, may be taken to mean, without being far-fetched, that besides the circumcision and the uncircumcision there is no other kind of religion to be found in this world. So under the person of one woman you can include the race of circumcised men bound by the worship and the law of one God, while under the person of the other woman you can comprehend all the uncircumcised Gentiles given over to the worship of idols.But they were both harlots. Well, the apostles say that Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Every soul that forsakes eternal truth for base earthly pleasures is whoring away from the Lord. Now about the church that comes from the whoredom of the Gentiles, it is clear that it did not kill Christ.… Pay attention to the Gospel and listen to what the Lord says: "Whoever does the will of my Father, this is my mother and brother and sister." So when did this one sleep, not indeed to smother her child in sleep but at least so that the dead one could be substituted and the living one taken away from her? […]

Is not that noble judgment of Solomon full of wisdom and justice? Let us see whether it is so. "Two women," it says, "stood before King Solomon, and the one said to him, 'Hear me, my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house, and before the third day we gave birth and bore a son apiece and were together; there was no witness in the house, nor any other woman with us, only we two alone. And her son died this night, because she laid on him, and she arose at midnight, and took my son from my breast and laid him in her bosom, and her dead child she laid at my breast. And I arose in the morning to nurse my child and found him dead. And I examined him at dawn, and behold, it was not my son.' And the other woman said, 'No, but the living is my son, and the dead is your son.' " This was their dispute, in which either tried to claim the living child for herself and denied that the dead one was hers. Then the king commanded a sword to be brought and the infant to be cut in half, and either piece to be given to one, one half to the one, and one half to the other. Then the woman whose the child really was, moved by her feelings, cried out, "Do not divide the child, my lord; rather, let it be given to her and live, and do not kill it." But the other answered: "Let it be neither mine nor hers; divide it." Then the king ordered that the infant should be given to the woman who had said "do not kill it," for, as it says, "her compassion earned over her son."It is not wrong to suppose that the mind of God was in him; for what is hidden from God? What can be more hidden than the witness that lies deep within; into which the mind of the wise king as though to judge a mother's feelings and elicited as it were the voice of a mother's heart? […]

Again, I see these two women in one house as representing two kinds of people in one church: one of them dominated by insincerity, the other ruled by charity. So we may regard these two kinds of people simply like two women, called love and insincerity. Insincerity, of course, deceitfully imitates love. That is why the apostle warns us against her when he says, "Let love be without insincerity." Although the two live in one house as long as that gospel net is in the sea, enclosing good and bad fish together until it is brought ashore, yet each is doing her own thing. They were both harlots, though, because everyone is converted to the grace of God from worldly desires, and nobody can properly boast about any prior justice and its merits. A harlot's committing fornication is her own doing; her having a son is God's. All human beings, after all, are fashioned by the one creator God. Nor it is surprising that God works well even in the sins of men and women. After all, even the crime of Judas the traitor was used by our Lord to achieve the salvation of the human race. But the difference is that when God brings something good out of anyone's sin, it is not usually something that the sinner wants. It is not only that when he sins he does not sin with the same intention as God's providence turning his sin to a just end—Judas, you see, did not betray Christ with the same intention as Christ had in allowing himself to be betrayed; it is also that when he realizes his sin has produced a better result that he never wanted to happen, it gives him more pain than pleasure. Suppose, for example, someone wants to give his enemy poison while he is sick, but he makes a mistake about the kind of medicine and gives him something beneficial instead, so that the sick person gets better through the kindness of God, who decided to turn his enemy's villainy to his advantage. […]

The two women indicate to us the church and the synagogue. The latter, after it tried to suppress the sacrament of human redemption and persecuted and killed the Redeemer through false accusations, claims, nevertheless, that its child should still be alive, that is, that the …

Now let the other one claim that the gospel is hers, as being owed to her and produced through her. For that is what they were saying to the Gentiles in this dispute, those of the Jews who, while clinging to the letter of the law, dared to call themselves Christians. They were saying that the gospel had come as something owed to them for their justice. But it was not theirs, because they did not know how to grasp its spirit. So they even had the audacity to contend that they were to be called Christians, boasting in someone else's name like that woman claiming a son she had not borne; and this though by excluding a spiritual understanding from the works of the law they had as it were drained the soul out of the body of their works, and while smothering the live spirit of prophecy had remained attached to their material keeping of the law, which lacked all life, that is to say, spiritual understanding. They wanted to foist all this on the Gentiles too, and take from them, like the living child, the name of Christian. In refuting them, the apostle went so far as to say that the more they claim Christian grace as their due and boast that it is theirs as though by right of the works of the law, the less it really belongs to them. "For to one who works," he says, "his wages are not reckoned as a grace or favor but as his due. But to one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the wicked, it is faith that is reckoned as justice." And therefore he does not count among their number those of the Jews who had believed rightly and were holding fast to a living spiritual grace. He says this remnant of the Jewish people were saved, when the majority of them had gone to perdition. "So therefore at the present time also," he says, "a remnant has been saved, chosen by grace. […]