Aquinas returns to an unresolved question: he had implied that Solomon's wisdom surpassed all others. But how can this be, if Adam was created perfect and Christ was the fullness of human wisdom? Aquinas distinguishes carefully. The light of divine wisdom descends from the Trinity through the angels to the spheres to human souls, diminishing at each step. Adam was created with as much intellectual perfection as the fallen world allows; the Virgin Mary is the most perfectly illuminated of all human souls. But Solomon was not being compared to Adam or to Christ; he was being praised as a king, in the specific gift he asked for — prudential wisdom to rule his people justly. In that specific domain, no king before or after has equaled him.
Aquinas uses this occasion to deliver one of the most important practical warnings in the Paradiso: do not be hasty in judging. A man who thinks he sees the truth may be looking at only a part of it; the mind that races to conclusions often misses what patient inquiry would reveal. Aquinas himself lists examples of reversals that should instill humility — ideas held certain that were overturned, heresies that seemed obviously wrong and turned out to contain truth, and vice versa. "Let not Lady Bertha and Messer Martin think they see into divine counsel," he warns — the common people who judge too quickly about who is saved and who is damned. The lesson is epistemological and moral at once: in this life, be slow to conclude.