exercising political, military, and judicial responsibility. In all these connections Solomon knows he needs to be able to discern between good and bad. You might be surprised that he dares to ask this, because back at the beginning God had told the first human beings to keep off the tree that could convey the knowledge of good and bad (we usually say “good and evil,” but the words here are the same). It seems that the issue back then was not that God was against people having this knowledge but