A man walking across a frozen field saw a snake lying stiff in the snow. Touched by pity, he picked up the creature, placed it inside his shirt against his chest, and continued on. Warmed by his body, the snake quickened. And as soon as the snake could move, it coiled around his neck and began to squeeze.
"To repay evil for good," the snake said, "is the way of the world."
The man protested. They agreed to go before a judge. On the road they met an ox. The ox sided with the snake. They met a donkey. The donkey sided with the snake. They came before King David, who listened and ruled — with Genesis 3:15 on his lips, he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel — for the snake.
The man left the court certain he was going to die.
Just outside the palace, he saw a small boy playing near a well. The boy's stick had fallen into the water, and no one could reach it. The boy — Solomon, David's son, not yet king — ordered his attendants to widen the conduit beneath the well so that the water level would rise. They did. The water lifted the stick to the rim. The boy picked it up.
The old man, impressed, told the boy the whole story. Solomon asked his father's permission to try the case himself. David granted it.
Solomon called the parties before him. "Snake," he asked, "on whose authority did you act?"
"The authority of the Lord, who said the serpent shall bruise the heel."
"Then abide by the word of the Lord," Solomon said. "When two parties come before the Torah, they must stand apart, facing each other. Snake — uncoil yourself. Stand on the ground separate from the man."
The snake, compelled by its own quoted verse, slid off the man's neck and onto the dirt.
"Now, old man," Solomon said, "do what is written: bruise its head with the stick in your hand."
The old man did. The snake was dead.
Gaster's Exempla #441b preserves this story. Solomon read the same verse the snake had, and read it better. Wisdom is the ability to find, inside the argument the enemy is using, the argument that ends him.