How Solomon Lost His Throne and Found It in a Fish

Midrash Aggadah Gittin 68b

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 15, 2025

The story picks up after Ashmedai, king of the demons, has seized Solomon's magical ring and flung it into the sea. Power stripped, Solomon is no longer Solomon. The demon king hurls him four hundred miles into a foreign land.

For three years Solomon wanders — the wisest king who ever lived reduced to a beggar, going door to door. Finally he reaches Mash Kemim and finds work as the head cook in the palace of the king of Ammon. The palace does not know it is feeding a king.

There Naama, the king's daughter (1 Kings 14:21, 14:31), sees him and falls in love. Knowing her father will never allow it, she runs away with him to a distant land. They live as exiles.

One evening Naama is preparing a fish for dinner. She slits open its belly and finds a ring inside. It is not just any ring. It is the ring — the one the demon king threw into the sea, the one whose loss had knocked Solomon off his throne and into beggary.

The ring returns to his finger. With it his power returns, and with his power the throne of his father David. The fish that Naama gutted in a strange kitchen was the door back to Jerusalem. Gittin 68b preserves the tale.

The crown you lost in one kingdom may be waiting for you at dinner in another.

Themes

Solomon King David Demons Exile Miracles

Biblical References

1 Kings 14:21

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