The climax of King Solomon's judgment exposes a profound contrast between devoted motherly love and destructive jealousy. The terrifying threat of the king's verdict forces the hidden motives of both women to the surface, instantly untangling a complex legal dispute. King Solomon possessed a deep understanding of human psychology; he recognized the truth the moment he saw their faces and heard their initial claims. His shocking command to divide the infant was never intended to be carried out. Rather, it served as a public test designed to reveal the reality to everyone present [מצודת דוד, אברבנאל].
Faced with the imminent death of her child, the true mother is overwhelmed by a deep, burning compassion [מצודת ציון, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. She is completely willing to surrender her son to the other woman, so long as his life is spared. In her desperate plea to the king, she is actually asking to take the blame and accept punishment upon herself to ensure the infant is safely handed over to her rival [אברבנאל]. This ultimate sacrifice is not an admission of guilt or falsehood. It stems purely from a mother's mercy [מלבי״ם], driven by the quiet hope that if the child is allowed to live, he might one day grow up and return to his true mother [צאינה וראינה].
In sharp contrast, the second woman responds with chilling cruelty, directly urging the royal guards to strike and cut the child [רד״ק, ביאור שטיינזלץ, אברבנאל]. This raises a fundamental question: why would a woman who kidnapped an infant in the middle of the night just to have a living son suddenly agree to his death? Several underlying motives explain her reaction. First, she recognized that the true mother's surrender was an act of pure mercy, and she suspected the king would realize this and refuse to award her custody anyway [רד״ק, צאינה וראינה, אברבנאל]. Furthermore, she knew she lacked genuine maternal love for the infant. Even if she took him, the boy's identity would forever remain under a cloud of suspicion due to the highly public nature of the dispute [אברבנאל, מלבי״ם]. Ultimately, her primary motivation was never a genuine desire to raise a child. Driven by spite and vindictiveness, she had no intention of nursing another woman's baby. Her true goal was simply to deny her companion the joy of a living son, making a shared, devastating loss her preferred outcome [מצודת דוד, אברבנאל, מלבי״ם].