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The Preservation of the family Life, and the elevation of Woman by the establishment of the rights of Female Heirs (the Daughters of Zelophehad)
Num_27:1-11
6And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 7The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. 8And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and 9have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And 10if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father’s brethren. 11And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Yet in so doing they act indirectly for themselves, i. e., for their own womanly dignity. They establish the claim that a family name could be preserved through a female generation merely—that in a conditional method female heirs could represent and take the place of male. They thus secured the law with respect to the inheritance of daughters, and with it a significant elevation of woman in her social dignity; although it did not amount to an equality with man. Their common and confident appearance before Moses, before the high-priest, the elders and the whole congregation, was itself an act of true moral elevation, which must have had a lasting effect, and therefore they well deserved to have their names rescued from oblivion, by a double record here and in Num_36:10 : Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah.
That the law of inheritance was still in a forming state was owing doubtless to the fact, that in the so-called father-houses the patriarchal customs, the right of destination exercised by the patriarchal family head, modified perhaps by the views of the family council, were still to a large extent preserved. Thus here there is nothing said as to the right of inheritance of daughters when there are sons also; and the contingency of a daughter carrying her inheritance over into another tribe is left unprovided for, until the restrictions and limitations are fixed in chap. 36. The very question whether there was any right of inheritance for females was still so novel that even Moses felt constrained to seek a special decision upon it from the Lord (Num_27:5). These daughters surely had the purpose to preserve the memory of their father’s house through their possessions, i. e., by taking husbands only on the condition that the sons who might be born should be designated as descendants of their father Zelophehad. The provision, however, in chap. 36. seems to prove that this was not the universal custom, as Keil, Knobel [Bible Com.: suppose, citing as practical examples of it Jarha (1Ch_2:34), Jair (Num_32:41; Deu_3:14), Barzillai (Ezr_2:61; Neh_7:63). The fuller explication of the law, however, as to the inheritance of daughters, which, as an ordinance of God, fixed definitely the status of the right, truly led to this custom. If the sire of a house die without sons, his inheritance passed to his daughters. But in what sense the following regulations reveal: the heir next in succession shall be his brother, etc. In any case the inheritance must remain in the tribe. [Bible Com.: “A father, whether sons had been born to him or not, had the power, either before or at his death, to cause part of his estate to pass to a daughter; in which case her husband married into her family rather than she into his, and the children were regarded as of the family from which the estate had come. Thus Machir, ancestor of Zelophehad, although he had a son Gilead, left also, as is probable, an inheritance to his daughter, the wife of Hezron, of the tribe of Judah, by reason of which their descendants, among whom was Jair, were reckoned as belonging to the tribe of Manasseh (1Ch_2:21 sq.). Thus Sheshan also, who had no sons, married his daughter to his Egyptian servant Jarha, and so had by them a long line of posterity (1Ch_2:34 sq.). Other earlier nations had like customs. The daughters of Laban complain of “having no portion or inheritance in their father’s house” (Gen_31:14), intimating apparently that Laban might have given them such had he so pleased, and thus bound their husband by ties which would have prevented them from leaving his father-in-law. So of the daughters of Job it is specially noted that “their father gave them inheritance among their brethren” (Job_42:15).—A. G.]
The daughters of Zelophehad based their demand upon their father’s right, which he had not forfeited. He was not in the company of Korah, but died in his own sin [i. e., the sin which he had committed with others in the wilderness, and for which he died without entering the land of promise.—A. G.] His destruction with the company of Korah would have forfeited his heritable right, but since he died in his own sin, i.e., from the universal connection between sin and death, he was on the same level with all the others. Had the daughters of Zelophehad intended to hint even, that he had through special transgressions hastened his death, they still knew well that that had involved a curse which rested upon his race. Indeed these daughters of Zelophehad possessed a fair faculty for doctrinal discriminations. Death without sin going before it, was for them at any rate inconceivable. For the law of inheritance among other Oriental nations see Knobel, p. 161; and J. Selden, de success. ad leges Hebr. in bona defunctorum, Frankfort, 1645 [also Keil, Archæol., § 142, Vol. II., pp. 212, 213; and Wines, Laws of the Hebrews.—A. G.].
[Wordsworth: Regard these women as striking examples of faith. They believe that the promised land would be inherited by Israel; and also of the working of God’s grace perfecting itself in human weakness, and cherishing the “weak things of this world to confound the mighty.”—A. G.]
Footnotes:
Heb. diminished.