על חיי משה, ספר ב מ״גOn the Life of Moses, Book II 43
א׳
1[233] Having thus discussed the case of those who, through adverse circumstances, failed to make the Paschal sacrifice with the mass of the nation, but were set upon repairing the omission if late yet as best they could, I will pass on to the final ordinance, which concerns the succession to an inheritance. This, like the others, originated in a question and answer and was thus of a mixed character.
ב׳
2[234] There was a man called Zelophehad, highly reputed and of no mean tribe, who had five daughters and no son. After the death of their father, the daughters, suspecting that they would be deprived of the property he had left, since inheritances went in the male line, approached the ruler in all maidenly modesty, not in pursuit of wealth but from a desire to preserve the name and reputation of their father.
ג׳
3[235] “Our father died,” they said, “but not in any of the risings in which, as it fell out, multitudes perished, but followed contentedly the quiet life of an ordinary citizen, and surely it is not to be accounted as a sin that he had no male issue. We are here outwardly as orphans, but in reality hoping to find a father in you; for a lawful ruler is closer akin to his subjects than he who begat them.”
ד׳
4[236] Moses admired the good sense of the maidens and their loyalty to their parent, but suspended his judgement, being influenced by another view, which holds that men should divide inheritances among themselves, to be taken as the reward for military service and the wars of which they have borne the brunt; while nature, who grants to women exemption from such conflicts, clearly also refuses them a share in the prizes assigned thereto.
ה׳
5[237] Naturally, therefore, in this wavering and undecided state of mind, he referred the difficulty to God, Who alone, as he knew, can distinguish by infallible and absolutely unerring tests the finest differences and thereby shew His truth and justice.
ו׳
6[238] And He, the Maker of All, the Father of the World, Who holds firmly knit together heaven and earth and water and air and all that each of them produces, the Ruler of men and gods, did not disdain to give response to the petition of some orphan girls. And, with that response, He gave something more than a judge would give, so kind and gracious was He, Who has filled the universe through and through with His beneficent power; for He stated His full approval of the maidens.
ז׳
7[239] O Lord and Master, how can one hymn Thee? What mouth, what tongue, what else of the instruments of speech, what mind, soul’s dominant part, is equal to the task? If the stars become a single choir, will their song be worthy of Thee? If all heaven be resolved into sound, will it be able to recount any part of Thy excellences? “The daughters of Zelophehad have spoken rightly,” He said.
ח׳
8[240] Who can fail to know how great a commendation is this testimony from God? Come now, you boasters, with your windy pride in your prosperity, and your pose of perked up necks and lifted eyebrows, who treat widowhood, that piteous calamity, as a joke, and the still more piteous desolation of orphanhood as a matter for mockery.
ט׳
9[241] Mark how the persons who seem thus lonely and unfortunate are not treated as nothing worth and negligible in the judgement of God, of Whose empire the least honoured parts are the kingdoms found everywhere in the civilized world; for even the whole compass of the round earth is but the outermost fringe of His works—mark this, I say, and learn its much-needed lesson.
י׳
10[242] Still, though he praised the petition of the maidens and refrained from leaving them empty-handed, he did not promote them to equal honour with the men who bore the brunt of conflict. To these he assigned the inheritances as prizes suitable to their feats of valour; the women he judged worthy of charity and kindness, not of reward for services. He shows this clearly by the words He uses. He says: “Gift” and “thou shall give,” not “payment” and “thou shalt pay,” for the latter pair are used when we receive what is our own, the former when we make a free gift.