This week’s passage from 1 Kings 3 introduces Solomon from two angles: private and public.

First, the private view: in verses 4-15, the narrator gets us right into the sleeping brain of Solomon. In his dream, Solomon talks with God. God starts the conversation with a command: “Ask what I should give you” (verse 5 NRSV). Different translations yield slightly different renderings of this line, but the first word God utters, “ask”(Hebrew she’al), is inarguably an imperative.

While in some ways this command to “ask” feels as if God is offering Solomon a blank check, it strikes me as more of a test of Solomon’s fitness for kingship. Will Solomon answer rightly? After all, the narrator of 1 Kings has already expressed ambivalence about Solomon, saying, “Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places” (1 Kings 3:3).

This is the classic struggle of the Deuteronomistic History, which revels in the glory brought to ancient Israel by the monarchy, ...