8 Her parents left, marveling and praising the Lord because the child hadn’t turned back. Mary remained in the temple of the Lord, like a dove living there, receiving food from the hand of an angel. When she turned twelve, the priests gathered and said, “Look, Mary has reached the age of twelve here in the temple. What should we do with her so that she doesn’t defile the sanctuary of the Lord?” They said to the high priest, “You stand at the altar of the Lord; go in and pray about her, and whatever the Lord reveals to you, that’s what we’ll do.” The high priest went in, taking the robe with the twelve bells, and entered the holy of holies. As he prayed about her, an angel of the Lord appeared beside him, saying, “Zacharias, Zacharias, go out and gather the widowers of the people. Let each one bring his staff, and the one to whom the Lord shows a sign, she will be his wife.” So the heralds went throughout all of Judea, and the trumpet of the Lord sounded, and everyone came running.

The Sages stated a parable based on the development of the fruit of a fig tree with regard to the three stages of development in a woman: Minority, young womanhood, and grown womanhood. An unripe fig, a ripening fig, and a ripe fig. An unripe fig represents the stage when she is still a child and has not yet developed the signs of puberty; a ripening fig represents the days of her young womanhood, when she reaches twelve years and one day and has developed two pubic hairs. With regard to the periods both during this stage, minority, and during that stage, young womanhood, the Sages said that her father is entitled to any lost object that she finds that cannot be returned to its owner, and to her earnings, and to nullification of her vows. A ripe fig represents the stage of grown womanhood: Once she has reached her majority, her father no longer has authority over her. He can no longer nullify her vows, and he does not have a claim to lost objects found by her and her earnings belong to her.