“Your Majesty, I thank you for the opportunity to have a last wish.” Shlomo Hamelech faced the ruler with a calm expression and a slight smile playing on his face. “Indeed, it is true that I arrived at your palace without invitation. That is because something here belongs to me, not you.” Shlomo Hamelech faced his wife and his smile faded. “She should not have left my palace and traveled across the ocean to live in such a place…. She did not choose wisely, and for that there must also be an accounting…. For both of you, the queen and the ruler, I will need to deliver justice….”

“Deliver justice?” The king snorted. “What on earth are you referring to? You are not in charge here! I’m the one who is going to take your life in just a few short moments. So don’t waste your last breaths trying to intimidate me! What is your wish?”

“My last wish is for you, the queen, and I to enjoy one last meal together. Set a table with three chairs upon the large piece of wood I arrived in Africa with. I see you have it there and are planning to use it as the place for my execution. Wonderful. Set up our meal there.”

“Your last wish is to dine with your executioner and the wife who betrayed you?” The king looked incredulous. “Why not eat alone and enjoy your food?”

“I wish to have the company of the both of you.”

“Ludicrous!” The king shrugged. “Soldiers! Set up a table and chairs as he wishes! Use that board over there as our platform to dine on.”

The soldiers did as they were bid.

Food was brought and the king sat down at the table first, followed by the queen.

“Make sure his hands are bound tightly!” the king instructed. “I don’t want him trying anything funny!”

“Do not worry, Your Majesty. I personally inspected the chains around him. It’s humanly impossible to break free of them!”

The crowd pressed forward in fascination as Shlomo Hamelech took his seat at the narrow table. They began to murmur among themselves. What was the Jewish king up to? Something, surely, was about to occur….

And then it did.

Shlomo Hamelech summoned the winds and suddenly the board they were all perched on, lurched and lifted off the ground. The king screamed even louder than the queen as they rose higher and higher in the air.

“Put us down! Put us down!” the king shrieked, holding on to his seat as the crowd below gasped in shock and pointed upward at the incredible spectacle. “F-f-forgive m-me!”

“P-p-please!” The queen’s teeth began chattering in fear. “I know I should never have taken that plant and left! Don’t kill me now! I beg you for mercy.”

“I am not going to kill anyone, and no one is going to get hurt right now.” Shlomo Hamelech spoke clearly and calmly, as if they were not hovering in midair on a plank of wood. “But there are injustices that must be dealt with. Here in Africa, I have no intention of passing my own judgment on the two of you. But once we are back in Eretz Yisrael, the court there will hear your case and do as they see fit.”

For in truth, his wife was guilty of the tremendous aveirah she had committed and Shlomo Hamelech knew that neither she nor the king would be vindicated in a Jewish court for their actions.

They flew back to Eretz Yisrael and the court did indeed pass a judgment of death for both the queen and the African ruler.

Rav Moshe was then reminded that no wisdom in the world could ever surpass the glorious wisdom of the Torah. Indeed, everything derives from the Torah, and it was solely because Shlomo Hamelech understood the secrets of the Torah that he was the wisest person to ever walk the planet, and able to perform the greatest supernatural  feats. No matter what the sheik had to offer, if it was anything of substance, it must have been taken from the Torah.

Rav Moshe’s three days of intensive fasting passed quickly and, not before long, he was once again standing before the sheik. It was time to learn the great secret at long last.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Jr., Issue 880)