18.09.2026
Two women give birth at the same time. One baby dies and one survives. The women fight over the remaining baby, saying each of them is the mother. King Solomon’s solution? That we cut the baby in half and give each half to each mother. The real mother will not allow this to happen while the false mother will. This is the supposed wisdom and legal acumen of Solomon.
I wrote about how this story in the Bible reveals the monstrosity of the law. Let’s have another look at that today.
Solomon as the King, as The Father, as The Law, what does he count on? He counts on the real mother being a real mother. Not wanting her son to die. However, he also counts on the false mother, the usurper woman, to want the son to die. To want the son to be cut in half.
It does not make sense. This is a woman who has just had a baby that died. The whole reason that she took the other woman’s baby is that she wants to have a real baby. So why would the false mother even choose to have half of a dead baby? In fact, Solomon’s supposed wisdom would only draw outrage from both mothers. It would not produce the truth.
King Solomon’s law and The Father’s Law assumes that the false, usurping mother is a being of terrible violence and injustice. The bringer of death. This is the misogyny at the heart of The Father’s Law in a patriarchy. This is how the law conceives of women. The devouring Mother.
Yet, bizarrely, The Father’s Law enacts the wish of violence and devouring of the false Mother. Solomon says that he will cut the baby in half. In fact, the law models itself on this false, devouring, usurping mother.
This is a case of the law’s projection. It uses the false devouring and usurping Mother as a screen which actually reflects back its own being in injustice, in violence and duress, in usurpation. What is being mirrored is the law’s reality. It is not the false mother that is unjust. It is the law itself. Why else would the law mirror the false usurping woman?
At the same time, the legal strategy attacks the real mother. She is subjected to the symbolic violence of the law that will devour her baby.
This is the reality of the patriarchal Judaeo-Christian law that has been inherited by the West. It is based in structural misogyny and deflection. It is against The Mother. It is aggression against The Mother. And yet, this is what is described as wisdom.
