King Solomon warned a skilled builder — the man who had constructed his palace — that the builder's wife was unfaithful. The builder refused to believe it.
Solomon did not argue. He dismissed the man with thanks and a parting gift: a silver goblet of fine workmanship. The builder took it home.
That day, the wife's paramour came to visit. He saw the goblet gleaming on the shelf and admired it. The wife, vain and pleased with the gift, suggested they drink from it together. The two of them raised the cup to their lips.
Their mouths fused to the silver.
They could not let go. They could not separate the goblet from their lips. Solomon had inscribed the cup with a working — a test of faithfulness that bound two mouths together if they drank in treachery. The husband came home, found his wife and the stranger frozen face-to-face at the cup, and marched them to the palace.
Solomon looked at the scene and pronounced the remedy. "The spell can only be broken," he said, "if their heads are pierced with red-hot iron."
The husband panicked. Whatever betrayal his wife had committed, he did not want her executed. He pleaded for mercy. Solomon relented.
He took David's sword, on which the Ineffable Name — Shem ha-Meforash — was engraved. He poured water over the blade. He sprinkled the charged water across the lovers' faces. The spell broke. Their mouths released the cup.
In a variant tradition, two Torah scholars passed a Torah scroll between the lovers, and the weight of scripture itself broke the adhesion.
Gaster's Exempla #351a preserves both endings. The Torah and the Name are stronger than every other working. Even a spell made by Solomon yields to them.