Cytowanie Komentarza do Przysłów 31:10

Bahya writes. King Solomon, of blessed memory, said: “what a rare find is a capable wife” [Proverbs 31:10]. This means, a clever wife who is capable of working day and night to maintain her house. She gives charity to the poor from her work or her earnings. This woman is worthy of praise. Therefore, the verse praised her, since the woman can bring her husband and children to the world to come. She does the necessary work in the house and her husband and children can study Torah, just as the body is given to the soul expecting that the person should properly serve God. So too the wife was given to the person so that she should help her husband serve God properly. Concerning this, our sages said, he merited a helpmate. That is to say, when the person is worthy, God gives him a wife who helps him properly serve God. However, when the woman has no beauty, you would think that she is not praiseworthy. Therefore, the verse said, “grace is deceptive, beauty is illusory” [Proverbs, 31:30]. That is to say, one should not praise that the woman is beautiful or lovely, but one should praise her when she has done good deeds. The Midrash writes about the verse “what a rare find is a capable wife” [Proverbs, 31:10]. This means, he compared the Torah to a clever wife, since the Torah contains within it much wisdom and good deeds. Through this, the person can come to the world to come. People praise the person who studies Torah and bless him, even though the person is blessed by God. However, in any event, the Holy One gave it into the hands of people that they should bless people. The Holy One first blessed Adam and Noah until Abraham our Patriarch came and the Holy One gave into his hands that he should bless whomever he wanted. Whomever he will bless, they will be blessed. Isaac also blessed Jacob and Jacob blessed his children. Moses did this here in the portion and he blessed all of Israel before his death. Concerning this it says here:¹Bahya, Zot Ha-Brachah, Introduction.

Micaiah the daughter of Uriel And above (11:20), he calls her by a different name, Maacah the daughter of Absalom, and in I Kings (15:10), it is likewise written “Maacah the daughter of Absalom.” Micaiah the daughter of Uriel was her [real] name, and here he calls her thus because this is the genealogical record of Judah. In Kings, which is the book of the kings of Israel and Judah, he calls her by her nickname, Maacah the daughter of Absalom. Now, for this reason, they nicknamed her Maacah, rather than call her by her real name, Micaiah, (and the name of her father was Uriel Abishalom). She was called by the name of her daughter-in-law, who was a valiant woman, a heroic woman, as it is written (below 15:16): “And also Maacah the mother of King Asa he removed from being queen,” and in honor of her daughter-in-law, they called the mother-in-law by the daughter-in-law’s name. So it is explained in Yerushalmi (unknown). Now this tradition is in the name of Rabbi Eliezer, and he told me this in the name of his father, and so I found in his father’s commentary: Wherever a “vav” is added to the name of a woman, this is to her praise, like Athaliah (below 22: 12): “and Athaliah reigned over the land,” for she was a valiant woman; similarly Jecaliah (ibid. 26:3) and Jecaliahu (II Kings 15:2), because she was a heroic woman, for Amaziah her husband fled to Lachish and was there fifteen years until he died, and she judged the people all those fifteen years, and later, when he died, they crowned his son Uzziah after him at the age of sixteen.

Having heard all this you will now understand the meaning of the scholar who claimed in a public lecture that a single Jewish woman in Egypt gave birth to 600,000 children (compare Shir Hashirim Rabbah 1,7). The word לידה, giving birth in an expanded sense, means to bring potential to fruition. The birth of Moses was equivalent to the coming into existence of 600,000 Israelites. The reason the scholar is described as making this mind-boggling pronouncement during a public lecture was because the audience had begun to doze off and the scholar wanted to rouse them from their sleep by making such an earth-shaking statement. The multitude was aroused by this statement though learned people knew that it was not to be taken at face value but summed up a certain concept. The scholar had sufficiently provoked his audience so that they asked who that woman was. He then told them that he referred to Yocheved who gave birth to Moses who was equivalent to 600,000 Israelites. The reason the scholar had used the term אשה, “a woman,” is the same as the reason which prompted Solomon in Proverbs 12,4 to say אשת חיל עטרת בעלה, וכרקב בעצמותיו מבישה, “a virtuous wife is the crown of her husband, but a wife who embarrasses him is like rot in his bones.” Solomon pointed out later in Proverbs 31,10 that finding such a virtuous woman was something very exceptional.