The servants of King David were sitting together eating eggs. One of them finished his egg while the others were still eating theirs, and he felt embarrassed to be sitting empty-handed at the table. So he borrowed an egg from a neighbor, promising to repay, and when asked about repayment, promised to give back "all that shall come of one egg." A reasonable-sounding promise.
Some time later, the lender came to collect. He had worked out the math. "From one egg," he said, "a chicken would have hatched. That chicken would have laid eighteen eggs. Those eighteen would have hatched eighteen chickens. Those chickens would have each laid eighteen eggs. And so on." He multiplied the generations out for years and arrived at a debt so enormous the borrower could never pay it.
The case came before King David. David, applying the law strictly, confirmed the calculation. Pay it, he ruled.
The desperate borrower wandered out of the palace and happened to meet the young prince Solomon, who asked him what troubled him. The borrower explained the ruling.
Solomon smiled. "Go to a field," he said. "Plant boiled peas. When the king rides past, he will ask what you are doing. Tell him you are planting boiled peas. When he says, 'Boiled peas will never grow,' you answer him: 'And a boiled egg will never hatch a chicken.'"
The next day David rode past the field. He saw the man scattering cooked peas into the dirt. He stopped his horse. "What are you doing? Boiled peas will not grow."
The borrower looked up at him. "And a boiled egg will not hatch."
David understood at once. He reversed his judgment. The borrower owed one egg, not a kingdom's worth of chickens (Gaster, Exempla No. 329).
The teaching is playful but serious. Even a king can apply the letter of the law and miss the truth in the middle of it. Wisdom, as Solomon demonstrated, is knowing when a strict calculation has wandered into absurdity.