על חיי משה, ספר ב מ״דOn the Life of Moses, Book II 44
א׳
1[243] After signifying His will as to the petition of the orphan maids, He lays down also a more general law about succession to inheritances. He names sons first for participation in their father’s property, and daughters second, if there are no sons. In the case of the daughters His phrase is that the inheritance should be “put round” them, as though it were an external ornament, not a possession by right of kinship inalienable. For what is put round does not have an intimate connexion with what it adorns, and the ideas of close fitting and union are quite foreign to it.
ב׳
2[244] After the daughters, He names the brothers as standing third, and the fourth place He assigns to uncles on the father’s side, thereby indirectly suggesting that fathers may become the heirs of sons. For it would be foolish to suppose that, while He assigns the inheritance of a nephew to his paternal uncle, because of that uncle’s relation to the father, He withdraws from the father himself the right of succession.
ג׳
3[245] But since, in the natural order of things, sons are the heirs of their fathers and not fathers of their sons, He left unmentioned this deplorable and sinister possibility, to avoid the idea of a father and mother making profit out of their inconsolable sorrow at the untimely death of their children. But He does indirectly mention this by admitting the right of the uncles; and thus He attains both ends, the preservation of decency and the rule that the property should not go out of the family. After the uncles comes the fifth class, the nearest relations. And in all such cases it is the first in succession to whom He gives the inheritances.