1 Kings 3:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream As he had done to Jacob at Bethel, Genesis 28:13; and to others on different occasions, Genesis 20:3; Genesis 26:24. Sleep is like a state of death to the soul; wherein the senses are locked up, and the understanding and will deprived of the free exercise of their functions. And yet this is no impediment to God in communicating his will to mankind; for no doubt he has power, not only to awaken our intellectual faculties, but to advance them above their ordinary measure of perception, even while the body is asleep. Solomon had prayed the day before with great fervency, and desired of God the gift of wisdom: see Wis 7:7. In the night-time God appeared unto him in a dream, and bade him ask whatever he would. Solomon, having his mind still full of the desire of wisdom, asked and obtained it: so that the prayer or desire he uttered in his dream was but the consequence of the option he had made the day before, when he was awake. In a word, though we should allow that the soul of man, when the body is asleep, is in a state of rest and inactivity; yet we cannot but think that God can approach it many different ways; can move and actuate it just as he pleases; and, when he is inclined to make a discovery of any thing, can set such a lively representation of it before the understanding, as shall make a man not doubt of the reality of the vision. See Calmet and Dodd.