“There are sixty queens, and eighty concubines, and young women without number” (Song of Songs 6:8). “There are sixty queens.” Rabbi Ḥiyya of Tzippori and Rabbi Levi interpreted the verse regarding the nations of the world. Rabbi Ḥiyya said: Sixty and eighty are one hundred and forty.
Forty of them have a language [of their own] but do not have a script [of their own] and forty do not have a language but have a script. “And young women without number,” the rest of them have neither a language nor a script. Is the same, perhaps, true of Israel? The verse states: “To the Jews in their language and in their script” (Esther 8:9).
Rabbi Levi said: Sixty and eighty are one hundred and forty. Seventy of them know their fathers but do not know their mothers. Seventy of them know their mothers but do not know their fathers. “And young women without number,” [those] who do not know their fathers or their mothers.
Is the same, perhaps, true of Israel? The verse states: “They established their genealogy according to their families, according to their fathers' household” (Numbers 1:18).24The term “their families” indicates that they knew their mothers and “their fathers’ household” indicates they knew their fathers. Alternatively, “they established their genealogy [vayityaldu]” is related to the term birth [leida], indicating that they knew their mothers.