Numbers
Chapter 36
Inheritance of Women
Then the heads of families in the clan of Gilead, son of Machir, grandson of Manasseh, one of the clans of Joseph, came forward. They spoke before Moses and the heads of the families of Israel
and said:
“The Lord has commanded you to give the land to the people of Israel, sharing it out by drawing lots; and the Lord has commanded you to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters.
Now, if they marry someone from another tribe in Israel, their property will be taken away from the inheritance of our fathers. The property of the tribe to which they will belong will be increased, while the property given to us will be decreased.
And when the jubilee year comes, the property of these women will be added to the inheritance of the tribe to which they belong and lost to the inheritance of our own tribe.”
Moses gave the following ruling to the people of Israel at the Lord’s command. He said:
“The tribe of Joseph is right.
This is the Lord’s decision for the daughters of Zelophehad: They may marry whom they please, but they must marry into a clan of their father’s tribe.
The property of the people of Israel is not to be transferred from tribe to tribe; the property of every Israelite is to remain attached to his own tribe.
Every woman who has inherited property in one of the tribes of Israel must marry into a clan of her own tribe so that each Israelite may inherit the property of his ancestors.
No property may be transferred from one tribe to another: every tribe of Israel will always keep its own property.”
The daughters of Zelophehad obeyed the Lord’s command to Moses.
Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, daughters of Zelophehad, married the sons of their father’s brothers.
Because they married into the clans of Manasseh, son of Joseph, their property stayed with the tribe of their father’s clan.
These are the commandments and laws that the Lord gave to the people of Israel through Moses on the plains of Moab, near the Jordan opposite Jericho.
Commentaries
Inheritance of Women.
This law should be read alongside 27:1-11, where the same women—who have no brothers or husbands—claim a portion of land as their rightful inheritance. The focus of Chapter 27 is on the right to inherit; here, it discusses the transfer of inheritance at marriage. This case shows the risk of land becoming concentrated among a few tribes through intermarriage. Such abuse is prevented by requiring, as a divine law, that marriages happen within the same clan; thus, land and other possessions do not become the property of different tribes.
Verse 13 concludes the entire book, placing everything that was said and legislated during the time in the desert under divine authority, especially here, “in the steppes of Moab, by the Jordan, opposite Jericho,” at the gates of the Promised Land. The continuation of the narrative is found in Joshua, which recounts the crossing of the Jordan River and the conquest of the Canaanite territory.