Before he was king, Solomon was a young boy with a gift for untangling impossible lawsuits. The tradition collected in the Parables of Solomon preserves one such case.
A wealthy and beautiful woman was being hounded by the local governor, who wanted her. To flee him, she prepared to leave the city — but first she took her gold, packed it into three clay jars, and poured honey over the top of each one to conceal it. She left the sealed jars with a neighbor she trusted and set off for a distant town.
Years later, when the governor died, the woman returned. In her absence, the neighbor had hosted his son’s wedding and, needing honey, remembered the jars. He opened one, found it full of gold, was stunned — but instead of holding it in trust, he emptied all three jars, took the gold for himself, and refilled the jars with fresh honey.
The woman came for her jars. Honey. No gold. She wept, she accused, but she had no proof. She took him to court. The judge ruled against her for lack of evidence.
On her way home, still weeping, she met a boy of perhaps ten or eleven years, playing with other children. He stopped her and asked her story. She told him. His face sharpened.
The boy went to King David his father and asked permission to handle the case. It was granted. Solomon had the three jars brought into the open square before the king and the people, and ordered them broken one by one. Out of the shards, among the spilled honey, they found two small coins of gold still stuck to the clay with dried honey — residue the neighbor had missed when he emptied them years before.
The neighbor paled. The whole city saw. The judge ordered him to return every coin of the woman’s fortune.
The rabbis preserved the story to say: wisdom is not an age. A child who looks carefully at a clay jar can see what grown judges missed.