The beauty of genealogies is that they open our eyes to characters and events we wouldn’t otherwise see. They connect the dots—sometimes dots we didn’t even know needed connecting.
A passing mention of the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 26 seems insignificant, until you connect it to the story in Numbers 27 and its conclusion in Numbers 36. What these chapters reveal is glimpse into the concern that God has for the vulnerable—in this case, a group of women without an inheritance.
As Numbers 26:33 mentions, these five women—Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah—were the only offspring of a man named Zelophehad. Their father “died in his own sin” (Numbers 27:3). The Text is careful to point out that this was in no way connected to the uprising of Korah, but something Zelophehad did on his own.
There’s a healthy debate amongst people as to Zelophehad’s sin, but it doesn’t really matter for our purposes. If he was over twenty at the time of the Exodus, he would’ve died in the wilderness regardless.
That leaves the five daughters with a unique situation. According to Numbers 26:2, the census was for all the “sons of Israel”—not daughters—from which the land would be divided (Numbers 26:52-56). If the five women had even a single brother, that son would’ve been claimed in the inheritance. Since it was just them, they stood a good chance of being overlooked.
This didn’t sit well with them. In a shocking (for the time) display of female empowerment, they approached Moses, Eleazar, and the elders of Israel at the Tent of Meeting, and demanded an equal possession in the promised land (Numbers 27:4).
This seems like a slam-dunk case: In a culture like this, if a man fathers no sons, one would assume it should naturally fall to the daughter.
But there are major logistical issues with this, namely, what happens when that woman marries someone with their own land inheritance. If a woman from Dan marries a man from Ephraim, for example, they would have two vastly different pieces of land that is technically their’s. That might roll for one generation, but it gets messy very fast.
Not that it’s necessarily a defense for a male-dominated society, but that’s one reason why it’s so efficient in ancient cultures. Having a single genealogical line makes inheritances, names, titles, birthrights, and more, very neat.
To his credit, Moses takes the matter before God, who lays out the line of succession:
- Upon a man’s death, the sons inherit the land.
- If there are no sons, the daughters inherit his land.
- If there are no children at all, the man’s brothers inherit the land.
- If there are no brothers, give it to the man’s uncles.
- If the man has no uncles, give it to his “nearest relative” within his own clan.
This isn’t the only time the waters of inheritance rights were muddied. According to 1 Chronicles 2:34-36, a man named Sheshan had only one daughter, who he gave in marriage to his Egyptian servant named Jarha. That union produced Attai, who then legally became Sheshan’s grandson and continued his genealogy.
But the story of the daughters of Zelophehad isn’t over. They resurface in Numbers 36, when concerns arise over their desire to marry people outside the tribe of Manasseh. If they do, legally, they would bring their inheritance with them to the new tribe, stripping Manasseh of valuable land inside its own territory.
To this, God adds another law: Any daughter who inherits land by virtue of having no brothers must marry within her own tribe. That way, the land stays inside it’s tribal allotment (Numbers 36:5-9).
God uses these types of stories to show His ability to think through various contingencies. In the event that one of us thinks we found a loophole to God’s commandments, the daughters of Zelophehad reveal to us that God has already thought of it. And, most likely, has regulated it, too.