"... The account of Solomon’s treatment of the rebellious Shimei at the end of the work seems to be an anticlimax, a strangely minor point on which to conclude a story of major events. But this piece, as well, connects to the opening scene of the work. The work begins with the pairing of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and bad. To have one is to lose the other. The work ends with a short account of Shimei’s fate, but the words “knowledge,” “good,” “bad,” and “death” fill it, occurring fifteen times. And the formulation of the deity’s command to the first human reappears here in the formulation of King Solomon’s command to Shimei. God says: “In the day you eat from it: you’ll die!” (Genesis 2:17; repeated in 3:3) Solomon says: “In the day you go out ... you’ll die.” (1 Kings 2:37; repeated in 2:42) And this formulation (“In the day you do X ... you’ll die.”) occurs nowhere else in the Bible ..."