The Judge Who Asked to Listen

In 1961, when Learned Hand retired from the United States Court of Appeals after fifty-two years on the bench, a young clerk asked him what single quality mattered most in a judge. Hand, then eighty-nine and nearly blind, didn't hesitate. "The spirit of not being too sure you're right," he said. His colleagues called him the greatest judge never to sit on the Supreme Court, yet Hand spent his final decades increasingly aware of how much he didn't know. He kept a worn notebook where he recorded his uncertainties — questions he couldn't resolve, cases where the law pulled him in two directions. He believed that notebook made him better, not worse, at his work.

Solomon stood at Gibeon with the same raw honesty. God offered him anything — longevity, military triumph, overflowing treasuries — and the young king essentially said, "I don't know enough to do this job." He asked for a listening heart, a mind tuned to distinguish good from evil among a people too vast and complex for any ruler to manage alone. It wasn't false modesty. Solomon genuinely understood the gap between the throne he'd inherited and the wisdom it demanded.

The most dangerous leaders are those who never feel that gap. The most faithful ones, like Solomon at Gibeon, bring their insufficiency before the Almighty and ask Him to fill it. A discerning heart always begins with knowing you need one.