is given in a law in Numbers (27: 6-n) whereby the daughters also were given a right to share in the inheritance, if there was no son to inherit. The story of the woman of Tekoah indicates that the desire of the kinsmen to avenge the death of the brother by slaying his murderer who remained the sole heir was prompted not so much by their zeal for the law as by their desire to gain the inheritance which his death would throw to them (II Samuel, 14: 5-7). In the words of the woman of Tekoah, they said, "Deliver him that slew his brother that we may kill him for the life of the brother whom he slew, and we will destroy the heir also, and so they shall quench my coal which is left and shall not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the face of the earth." These last words indicate the importance of the son in the family to keep alive the name of the father and to keep the inheritance in tact and hand it down to his children. The bearing of this upon the Levirate marriage is clear. In that case the deceased having left no son, the estate would revert to the colla teral kinsmen, and the chain of the family would be broken; hence, the law provided that the brother of deceased should marry the widow, and their son become the adopted child of the deceased, bearing his name and continuing the family. As the oldest son succeeded, as a rule, to the headship of the family, he was somewhat favored in the distribution of the estate, re ceiving a double portion which by a Deuteronomic law (21: 17) the father was not per mitted to diminish. The relation of the son to the succession was fixed by immemorial custom which, however, seems to have been broken from time to time by the action of the patriarch in assigning to the eldest born a smaller share or none at all. It was for the purpose of finally checking this that the law in Deuteronomy was promulgated, and at the time when the law of Succession was promulgated, the right of the son to inherit
was so well established that he is not men tioned in the list of the heirs except nega tively. The 'law stated that if a man has no son, the estate should be inherited in a cer tain way by others. Under the patriarchal system women could have no share in the inheritance because they were members of the family only as long as they were un married. A married woman became a mem ber of her husband's family, and it is obvious, therefore, that if women had been permitted to inherit, they would on their marriage have taken the inheritance out of the family of their father and brought it into the family of their husband. This, under the theory of the patriarchal family could not be permitted. But in time the hardship of actually exclud ing women from the inheritance prompted a law reform. The question was raised in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 36: 1-12; Joshua 17: 3-6), and it was decided that where there were no sons, daughters might inherit; and to avoid the danger of the estate passing out of the family, it was provided that the daughters thus in heriting should marry within the family of the tribe of their father. It will be noticed that, under the scheme of succession established by this case, the father was not named as one of the heirs. This indicates that as long as the father was living the son had nothing to transmit by inheritance; and this ancient rule of the patriarchal family, although no doubt modi fied by the condition of later times, remained in the law as a survival and reminder of the time when the father was master and the son could own nothing in his own right. There is one institution of modern times, namely the last will or testament, which ex isted among the ancients, but in so different a form as to be recognized with difficulty. A priori, a system like that of the ancient He brews, precludes the idea of the testa mentary distribution of the estate with which we are familiar. Under modern law
