beautiful as pearls." Yoma again talks of manna being as white as a pearl.
But one of the most striking things to a modern dealer in pearls is the rabbinical exception made to the law of Ona'ah (over-charge)
with reference to pearls in the case of matched specimens, it having
been fully realized by the wise and practical legislators that the
value of matched pearls exceeds by far the value of single pearls or
those promiscuously assembled. The curious may inform themselves on
the point if they are still interested by referring to the tractate Baba Mezi'a, iv. 8.
There
is a pretty rabbinical story which more than any other perhaps
illustrates the high esteem in which pearls were held by those
ancestors of the Jewish race.
On
approaching Egypt, the tale goes, Abraham hid Sarah in a chest, so that
foreign covetous eyes might not see her beauty. When he reached the
boundary of the kingdom and came to the place for paying customs dues,
the customs officers said, "Pay us the custom!" and he replied, "I
will pay your custom." They said to him: "Thou carriest clothes." And
he said. "I will pay for clothes." Then they said to him, "Thou
carriest gold." And he answered, "I will pay for gold." On this they
said, "Surely thou bearest the finest of silks." And he replied, "I
will pay custom for the finest silk." Then said they, "Truly it must be
pearls that thou takest with thee 1" And he answered, "I will pay for
pearls." Seeing then that they could name nothing of value for which he
was not willing to pay, they still thought that he must be cheating
them somehow, and they said, "It cannot be but that thou openest the
box and let us see what is within."
So
the chest was opened and the land was illumined by the luster of
Sarah's beauty. For if pearls are lovely, a beautiful woman is
incomparably more lovely than they.
Coming
to more modern times, the mention of pearls in the New Testament is too
well known to mention here. They show however, that the Jews still knew
that pearls were beautiful, and with them all the peoples of the great
Helleno-Roman
