Bava Batra 116b — the Talmud in English

And the Gemara answers:

Rami bar Hama ![](pamud.bmp "

exact page location")

because of his sharpness [

because of his sharpness, for he was preoccupied with another question, as follows]

did not examine it.

Further,

Rami bar Hama asked: The father’s father and his brother, such as Abraham and Jacob,

who come to inherit

the property of

Esau—which of them precedes?

Rava said: Ta shma: “The father precedes all the descendants of his loins,”

and if so, Abraham precedes Jacob .

And Rami bar Hama,

who was uncertain about the matter, reasoned: Perhaps he precedes only

his own descendants, and not the descendants of his son.

And

here too it is reasonable

that Jacob precedes Abraham in Esau’s property.

For it teaches: “This is the general rule: whoever precedes in inheritance,

but is absent, such as Isaac, who would have preceded Abraham had he been alive,

his descendants precede,”

and

since

if Isaac had been present, Isaac would precede, now too, when Isaac is absent, Jacob precedes.

And the Gemara’s conclusion: Indeed,

learn from it.

Mishna:

Since we learned in the preceding Mishna that “whoever precedes in inheritance, his descendants precede,” and it follows that a son’s daughter inherits where there are sons, we learned this Mishna, for the daughters of Zelophehad inherited their father’s portion in the property of Hepher, his father, in place of Zelophehad, their father.

The daughters of Zelophehad took three

portions in the inheritance,

in the Land of Israel:

their father’s portion, who was among those who went out of Egypt,

and this tanna held: “The Land was apportioned to those who went out of Egypt” , and even though they all died in the wilderness, nevertheless, when the Land was apportioned, it was apportioned according to the names of those who went out of Egypt; and if one of them had one son, while another had ten sons, the one would take [a portion] corresponding to the ten sons of his fellow. And in the Gemara this will be explained further.

And

likewise

they shared with his brothers

of Zelophehad

in Hepher’s property,

for he too went out of Egypt, and had a portion in the Land. And the daughters of Zelophehad took their father’s portion that he had in his father’s property. As we said above: “Whoever precedes in inheritance, his descendants precede.”

And

so, since

he was

Zelophehad

a firstborn ,

and had he been alive, he would have

taken two portions

in Hepher’s property, his daughters inherited his right to inherit these portions .