The story of Solomon's daughter and the bastard — the mamzer — is one of the most poignant tales in rabbinic literature. The Midrash (Tanhuma, Introduction) tells how Solomon, despite all his wisdom, could not prevent the fulfillment of a divine decree concerning his own child.
Solomon saw through astrology — or through prophetic insight — that his daughter was destined to marry a man of the lowest social status: a mamzer, a person born from a forbidden union, someone who occupied the very bottom of the Jewish social hierarchy.
The king did everything in his power to prevent this fate. He locked his daughter in a tower surrounded by water, guarded by seventy elders, provisioned for years. No man could reach her. No suitor could penetrate the defenses Solomon had built around his child.
But one cold night, a poor young man — freezing, homeless, desperate — found the carcass of a large ox by the roadside. He crawled inside it for warmth. A great eagle, mistaking the carcass for carrion, seized it in its talons and flew it to the roof of the very tower where Solomon's daughter was imprisoned.
The young man emerged from the carcass and found the princess. They fell in love. He was learned, kind, and brilliant — everything a father could want in a son-in-law, except for the accident of his birth. When Solomon learned what had happened, he did not rage. He said: "Blessed is God who pairs couples." If God could use an eagle and a dead ox to bring two souls together, then no wall, no tower, and no father's power could prevent what heaven had decreed.