1 Kings 3 read as the induced dream and as the one right request. Solomon goes up to the high place at Gibeon for the purpose of inducing a dream in which God will reveal himself - kings slept in holy places hoping to induce communication - and God appears and says: ask of me what you want. What Solomon asks is not what the story is usually told for. He does not ask for long life, for riches, or for the life of his enemies; he asks for an understanding mind, and then for the thing Neville makes the whole lecture turn on: O Lord God, thy promise to David my father fulfil this day. That promise is Nathan’s oracle (M794) - when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up after you your son who shall come forth from your body; I will be his father and he shall be my son. Since David is humanity (M800) and this life is the death the promise speaks of, the prayer is: bring it out of me, now. Solomon is therefore not a man but a state - the state a man reaches when he wants that more than anything in the world, instead of asking for an extension of life in the world of death - and everyone has to enter it. At 1119 the same prayer is read alongside Abraham's laughter at the absurdity of the promise, and the son is located coming out of the back of the skull. At 1856 Neville notes that President Johnson quoted a different portion of the passage in his inaugural address and missed the request itself.