על המידות הטובות מ׳On the Virtues 40
א׳
1[220] To this nobility not only did men beloved of God aspire, but women also, who unlearnt the errors of their breeding, the ignorance which led them to honour the works of men’s hands, and became schooled in the knowledge of the monarchical principle by which the world is governed.
ב׳
2[221] Tamar was a woman from Palestinian Syria, bred in a house and city which acknowledged a multitude of gods and was full of images and wooden busts and idols in general. But when passing, as it were, from profound darkness she was able to glimpse a little ray of truth, she deserted to the camp of piety at the risk of her life, caring little for its preservation, if it were not to be a good life. This good life she held to mean nothing else than to be the servant and suppliant of the one great Cause.
ג׳
3[222] Although she was married to two brothers in turn, both of them wicked, to the elder as her husband in the usual way, to the younger under the law of the duties of the next of kin, as the elder had left no issue, she nevertheless kept her own life stainless and was able to win the good report which belongs to the good and to become the original source to which the nobility of all who followed her can be traced.
ד׳
4But she, though a foreigner, was, at any rate, a free woman, of free lineage, and that perhaps of no little note.
ה׳
5[223] There were women born beyond the Euphrates, in the extreme parts of Babylonia, who were handmaids and were given as dowry to the ladies of the house at their marriage. But when they had been judged worthy to pass on to the wise man’s bed, the first consequence was that they passed on from mere concubinage to the name and position of wedded wives, and were treated no longer as handmaids, but as almost equal in rank to their mistresses, who, indeed, incredible as it seems, promoted them to the same dignity as themselves. For jealousy finds no home in the souls of the wise and free from its presence they share their good things with others.
ו׳
6[224] Secondly, the base-born sons of the handmaids received the same treatment as the legitimate, not only from the father, who might fairly be expected to show the same kindness to the children of different mothers, since his paternity extends to all alike, but also from the stepmothers. They rid themselves of hatred for the step-children and replaced it by an extraordinary regard for their interests,
ז׳
7[225] while the step-children returned their goodwill and honoured their stepmothers as fully as if they were their natural mothers. The brothers, though reckoned as half-brothers by blood, did not think it enough to give a half affection to each other, but showed a twofold increase of tenderness in the love which they gave and received in return; and the seeming defectiveness in their relationship they made good by the eagerness with which they hastened to unite both families in harmony and reciprocity of feeling.