038 Daughters of Zelophehad: Five Women Who Changed Property Law

Five women approach Israel’s highest leaders with a simple question that turns into a nation-shaping legal reform: what happens to a household when a father dies with no sons? We walk through the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27 and watch them bring a clear, courageous case to Moses, Eleazar, and the assembly. Then we slow down and read what God actually does with their request, because the ruling is bigger than a one-time exception. It becomes biblical inheritance law for all Israel. 

Along the way, we build the backstory from Numbers 26, where the census sets up how land in the promised land will be divided by tribes, clans, and households. That context matters because ancient Israel is not operating with modern individualism or a modern “women’s rights” framework. The household is the core social unit, and land is not just property, it is covenant, legacy, and belonging. We also talk about why a “name” matters so much, how afterlife assumptions shape the fear of being forgotten, and why God’s response points to faithfulness over pedigree. 

We also tackle the follow-up in Numbers 36, where tribal leaders raise a real concern about land drifting across tribes through marriage and Jubilee. God’s amendment protects tribal unity without erasing the daughters’ inheritance, and Joshua 17 shows the ruling applied when Israel finally enters the land. If you care about women in the Bible, Mosaic Law, ancient Israel, covenant theology, or how Scripture protects the vulnerable, this story has more depth than most people realize. 

Subscribe for more Bible law breakdowns, share this with a friend who loves the Old Testament, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What question do you still have about the daughters of Zelophehad?

To learn more about the role of Matriarchs: https://youtu.be/OO-E36xt_2E?si=bKp6fpO4BF8VEDim

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Why These Five Women Matter

Jessica LM Jenkins 0:25

But the daughters of Zelophad are ones that even the ancient rabbis viewed positively, saying that these daughters actually understood the law and God's heart better than Moses. You can't get much higher praise than to say, you get this better than Moses does. And I really want to highlight today their courage, their wisdom and insight into the law and what God is doing for the nation of Israel in these passages. So we are going to start by reading. There's three passages. So I'm going to I'm going to talk about each of them individually because they progress the story. And so we're going to read one, talk, and then move on. So Numbers 27. And I will not be doing name meanings for these passages because they don't really have much to do with the storyline. And so Numbers 27, 1 through 11. They came forward, the daughters of Zelophad. I'm going to say that different every single time. The son of Hefer, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of

Numbers 27 The Court Case

Jessica LM Jenkins 1:33

Manasseh, of the clan of Manasseh, the son of Joseph. And these are the names of his daughters, Mahla, Noah, Hogla, Milkah, and Tizrah. And they stood before Moses and before Eliasar the priest, and before the leaders and all the assembly at the opening of the tent of meeting to say, Our father died in the wilderness, and he himself was not among assembly who assembled against the Lord with the assembly of Korah. For his own sin our father died, and he did not have sons. So why should the name of our father be taken away from the midst of his clan? Because he didn't have a son. Give us then property in the midst of the brothers of our father. And then Moses came forward with this case before the Lord. And the Lord said this to Moses, The daughters of Zalophad are correct in saying, in this saying, You will certainly give them property of inheritance in the midst of the brothers of their father, and you will pass the inheritance of their father to them. And to the sons of Israel you, Moses, will speak, saying, This is the case of a man that dies and has no son, pass his inheritance to his daughter. If he has no daughter, then give his inheritance to his brother, and if he has no brothers, give his inheritance to the brothers of his father, and if he has no brothers of his father, then give inheritance to another relative close to him in his clan, and then he would take possession of the inheritance. So this will be to the sons of Israel, a statute of the law, as the Lord commanded Moses. So what we are seeing here is that these five wise women or even girls have realized an issue with the law and the inheritance that is being given to Israel. If we look in Numbers 26, some interesting things happen there that are important context for Numbers 27, our passage we're discussing. So in Numbers 26, the Lord tells Moses. So in Numbers 26, the Lord tells Moses to take kind of a census of all the men in Israel who were 20 years and above to serve in the army, you had to

Numbers 26 Census And Households

Jessica LM Jenkins 3:56

be 20 years old. Um that sir seems, um, as I've been in the Old Testament, the Mosaic Law a lot recently. 20 seems to be 2025, sometimes 30. Um, but 20-ish, early 20s, seems to be kind of an age of where you can serve officially. You could serve as a priest at 2025, you could serve in the army as 20. Um, they weren't allowing teenagers to do these sorts of um community tasks. And so the Lord in Numbers 26 tells Moses to number all of the men of each tribe that are 20 years and above. And then thereby the inheritance is to be divided up among that number of men. Um, so it's all men 20 and above, get a portion of the land of Israel when they go into the land. This is all planning ahead of time, they're not there yet. Um, so this is pre-planning when they get to Israel, and the Lord gives them that inheritance according to the storyline of Exodus through Joshua. Um, the Lord's going to give them an inheritance. How they're going to divide the inheritance between the tribes will be according to how many men over the age of 20 there are in the tribes. Now, what gets interesting is that now you may be familiar with the cultural structure of ancient Israel, but I'm going to review for anyone who is not. Um, at this point, the nation of Israel, so that's kind of our biggest bucket, the nation of Israel is made up of 13 tribes, not 12, but 13, because Joseph actually has two, Ephraim and Manasseh, and then Levi, the tribe of Levi is kind of set aside differently because they get the priesthood. So the tribe of Levi doesn't actually get inheritance in the land. They get some special cities, um, but they don't get like a big block of land. The Levites are supposed to kind of be spread out in Levitical cities all throughout the other tribes' inheritance. And that's important for other laws that we're not discussing today. Um so you have 12 tribes that are getting the inheritance, but Joseph is getting like double because of his two sons. And so nation is the big bucket, the next bucket is tribes, and you have 13 tribes, and then in the tribes, you have clans, which are smaller groups, and then you have households. Now, the households are the smallest unit of society. They don't necessarily consider the individual to be a member of society. Like today, I'm an individual, I am considered the smallest unit of society, as my husband, my children. We're all considered separate units of society. And together we make up a family, which is the next largest unit in 2026, the United States of America. In the ancient world, the household is considered the smallest, and individuals are made up of a household. So what we have here is household concerns, not necessarily just individual concerns. And that's really important as we consider women of the Bible and men of the Bible, because it's easy sometimes, and I see a lot of scholars do this, to start pitting women and men against each other in scripture. Like the men had these rights and the women's didn't. And it's like, oh, ho, ho, hold on, hold on. Households had rights and the members of the household played out functions within the household in unique ways according to their gender. But the idea of the individual having like rights, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, um, did that concept did not exist in the ancient world. So we have to take off a lot of our modern concepts of feminism and human rights and individualism, um, descart, I think, therefore I am. Um, all of that, we just have to set that aside and be like, that is part of our framework of what it means to be human. It is not part of their framework. And so in numbers 26, the Lord is determining how they are going to determine households as they move into the land. So each man of age 20 or above can be considered the representative of his household because they're assuming that every man is going to be married, etc. Um, singleness wasn't really a thing unless you were like widowed. Like everybody got married. That is the base assumption. Having adults who are single that are not widows just because they never got married, not a thing. So in 26, they are they're looking and saying, okay, every man above the age of 20, he should probably be married by this time, or he's gonna be getting married. We're gonna be the households, basically, we're gonna be considering as we split up the inheritance. If a family doesn't have sons over the age of 20, then they're gonna be considered as part of their father's household, not their own separate household, because it's all determined at this date, um, whatever date it was in November 26 and Numbers 26 when they did that census. From that date on is how they calculate the number of households per tribe, and they divide up the land when they move into the land of uh the promised land. When they move in there, they'll split up the land. Tribes with more households get more inheritance, tribes with fewer households get less inheritance, and that's how they're gonna split it up. So that's kind of like the context behind what's going on here, which makes this passage so interesting because typically the ancient Hebrew household, the patriarch and the matriarch, work together for the good of the household. They have separate duties, separate roles. I'll talk about this in my forthcoming book, and I have, I think, a YouTube on it. I'll try to link that as well. Um, but they have kind of separate roles. They do divide duties by gender a lot in the ancient world, but they have um a, they're not competing for power, and it's not a hierarchy with the patriarch above the matriarch. They are working together side by side. The patriarch is the face of the family. So when you say Joseph or Reuben, um, those are tribes, but if you say, you know, what's just a random name in here? If you say Mikar, we think, oh, Mikar, that must be the individual guy, Mikar. Just like my husband's name is Kevin. So if you're like, yeah, Kevin, um, you're thinking of Kevin only. If you're speaking of our whole household, you say the Jenkins. But in the ancient world, I would argue some of the time, and it's tricky because you have to understand the context. But some of the time, if they say like Makar or Abraham, they are talking about that individual person. But sometimes it's indicating their entire household, not just the individual, because they didn't have last names. And so the way you refer to a household is by the name of the patriarch. He is the face of the family, he's the representative, he's the one that's going to represent the entire household in religious, judicial, and other sorts of public-facing places. And so this passage is incredibly di interesting because these women come to Moses and the other priests, and the priest, Moses isn't a priest, and the high priest, um, and the other leaders of the Israelites at the entrance of the tabernacle, and they say, We need to talk. And they, it's kind of like a court scene. Um, they're

How Women Access Justice

Jessica LM Jenkins 11:19

probably Moses and the high priests and the leaders, they're probably adjudicating various cases. Um, this is a judgment court scene. That's they didn't have a city gate at the time to do these sorts of legal proceedings in. So they did it at the tent of meeting, the um opening to the tent of meeting. So the women come, probably with lots of other people who had various judicial cases, and they came and stood before Moses. So you have women coming and representing themselves. And what's really cool is that the text doesn't paint this as unusual. Yes, the husband, the patriarch, is the face of the family, but women seem to have access to the legal court system when they need to. Yes, often the patriarch would be the one to advocate for the family, but women also could have access, especially if they didn't have a patriarch to do that for them. This freedom women had um may have changed throughout Israel's history. It's not a static thing that was the same the whole time, which may be why, like Naomi and Ruth, you can go back and listen to my series on Ruth. Um, they needed Boaz to go adjudicate for them at the gate of Bethlehem. But at this point, in the wilderness wandering, women are able to come by themselves, um, without a male representative, into the highest court of the land to talk to Moses and the high priest and the Lord and speak what they need. And so we see that these daughters of Zelophad come, and their names are Bahla, Noah, Hogla, Milka, and Tirzah. And these women or girls, some think that these are all his actual like physical daughters. Some think it may be like he had a couple daughters and then she had a couple daughters. We're not really sure how all those family relationships work, but they are female relatives of Zahelifad, likely daughters. I'm gonna just go with that for this podcast. So these women come. We do not know if they are married. It is likely um they are not, or maybe one of them is. At least one of them is not at this point. And it's also likely that if they're not married, these are actually young teenage girls. Women often got married mid to late teens in the ancient world. Some think maybe younger, especially in the Old Testament. Um, I feel like the research isn't super conclusive on that. Um, and so these girls, I mean, frame them in your mind between 10 and 22. Okay. Um, the oldest ones may have been late teens, early 20s, and the youngest may have been a child, um, if the we're talking about five biological daughters of Zelilophad. And so they come and they they bring their case to Moses. And they are so wise in how they do this. They say, our father died in the wilderness, but he was not among the assembly who rebelled against the Lord with Korah. If you remember, Korah came and had a big dispute with Moses, and he and his household and all of his followers died. Again, sometimes it's really hard on our modern sensibilities when we see the Lord judge an entire household for like Korah's sin, like his kids, his wife, his animals. But again, the household is the smallest unit of society. It's the household, often everybody paid for the sin of one member of the household. And that really keeps um unity in the household. You have to work together because if one person messes up, everybody's gonna be impacted by this. So anyway, the uh Milhel Noah, Haglah, Milka, and Tizra come and they say, our father died in the wilderness, but it was because of his own sin he wasn't part of Korra's rebellion. And that's significant because anybody who participated in Korra's rebellion either died already or and we're not going to get an inheritance in the land. But they're saying our dad just died because of his own sin. He's not, so he could have received an inheritance if he had lived. Um, so he died for his own sin, but he didn't have sons. And so, will the name of our father be taken away from the midst of his clan? This is a big concern. And this goes far beyond just the basics of property rights and who gets a parcel of land. In ancient Israel, to have your name pass away, they seem to have believed would impact your afterlife. If your name passes away from among your people, you might not exist in the afterlife anymore.

The Deeper Stakes Name And Covenant

Jessica LM Jenkins 15:54

Um, and it's deeply shameful and problematic to have this happen. And so these girls, these young women are wondering, will the name of our father be taken away? He is the face of our family. And in essence, their question is, what happens to us? Yes, they will get married and join other households, but will the name of our father and this household cease to exist? And the bigger question that some um scholars I've read brought out is does the participation in the covenant of God depend on having sons? Does it depend on pedigree or does it depend on faithfulness? Because our father, just by luck of the draw, did not have sons. Does that mean he and every other family like him? Other families are probably listening, like, oh yeah, I only have daughters. What's gonna happen to my inheritance? That's a really good point. You know, I'm hopeful I might still have a son, but there's a possibility I don't. So what's gonna happen to me? You know, other people are listening, nodding a log, like, oh yeah, this is a big deal. Will my name, will our household vanish into nothingness just because I had daughters and no sons? Do women not count in the covenant the same way or at all? Not the same way men do, but do they count at all? Is faithfulness enough? Or does it have to be particular lineage and per particular genetic structure? Not that they thought in the terms of genetics. So the women are asking, do we get to participate in the tangible symbol of Israel's covenant with God, which is the land? Are we members of the covenant? Will our father's name pass away? And are we able to be members in the covenant? And then they state the request clearly. They are bold, they are direct, they do not mince words. They say, give us property in the midst of the brothers of our father. We ask to be included as full members of the clan that we women would get an inheritance. This does, in my mind, as I'm processing through it, make me wonder if maybe these girls are or women are over the age of 20, since the men had to be over the age of 20 to be counted. Maybe these are as well, and they are married, or um, they're just not married yet. If their dad died, that might be hard to get a husband because you don't have typically the patriarch and matriarch would your spouse. And if daddy died, they have no brothers to step into daddy's role. And mom's nowhere mentioned, so she may have died at some point as well. So I said they might be 10 to 22. We might actually be looking at mid-20s for this. Anyway, but they asked, give us property in the midst of the brothers of our father. We just don't know how old they are. That's my point. And then Moses came forward with this case, Mishpat, before the Lord. The Lord said, they're right. And I love that. God's just like, yep, they have a good point, and we need to address this. Um, he says, You will give them inheritance, and you're gonna make uh a principle for all of Israel. You're going to reform how property law is done from this point out. We are going to make a fundamental shift in how property law is done in

God Changes Israel Property Law

Jessica LM Jenkins 19:19

this tribal community. Now, Egypt and Mesopotamia did have some ways women inherit property, but those were developed nations that were settled. So we're dealing with a completely different culture. Israel's still very tribal, and tribal communities operate inheritance and property laws differently than like settled cultures do. And so the Lord says in these tribal community, we're going to shift how property law is managed. It used to be father, son, no sons. It would go to the father's brothers or cousins, et cetera, and move out. But we're going to stick daughters in there. If he has no sons, it goes to the daughters. And if he has no kids at all, only then does it go to his brothers. So women, daughters, instantly get put very high up in the inheritance rubric. I mean, as soon as there's no sons, the daughters get the full inheritance. Now, you're going to be asking, what about the wife? Why doesn't she inherit? Trying to keep it short, inheritance for wives throughout all of the ancient Near East, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, Mari, all of it. Um, Lebanon, um, Ugrit, Hittites. Sorry, they keep coming. Um, but it's it's tricky for wives. Typically, if a wife inherited, she kind of only inherited in trust for her children. She became like the executor of the state estate, um, because a concern was constantly that a widowed woman would remarry someone else. And if so, if she fully inherits her husband's property, then that property would go to whoever she marries in the future. Um, and so widows typically only inherited um enough to pass on the husband's property to her children, which safeguarded it from a second husband taking over the property of the first husband because that property had to belong to the children of the first husband, because they're thinking posterity, they are thinking legacy, they are thinking lineage, um, not individual rights. Okay. It's a completely different mindset. They're thinking, how is this going to pass on? Because children keep the name of their parents and grandparents alive, which impacts your afterlife. There's ancestor cults where you say the name of your ancestors and you remember your ancestors, and that's an essential part of the inheritance that children get from their parents. And so you really want to keep land connected to all of those things. And that's why wives didn't inherit like children did and like daughters would. Hopefully that makes sense. But so they change the property law here so that it goes sons, daughters, and then other male extended relatives. And daughters get stuck right in there. And it's not just a new law for the daughters of Zelhefad. It is a it this is going to impact all of Israel. So everyone's standing around wondering, yeah, I don't have any sons. Yet, what's going to happen to my inheritance? My daughters can get it. Okay, that's good news for everyone. Um, that is fantastic news. And it also helps orphaned girls who get their father's inheritance to be able to find spouses. And that's kind of what our next passage is going to focus on is spouses. But I mean, orphaned girls typically, again, the the patriarch or matriarch is in charge of finding you a husband or wife if you're a boy. The children didn't usually, unless they're orphans or widows, widowers, they didn't usually find their own spouses. And when we see guys go out and find their own wives in the book of Genesis, it's always looks bad unless they were sent by their parents. So like Esau got his own wife's bad news. Rebecca's like, these women are driving me crazy. This is shameful. I hate this. Send Jacob to find his wives. So the parents are like, Yes, you can find your wife. Please go. They've sent him to do it because he needs to go back to Haran and they're not going to go back to Haran. So it's a different situation. Normally, the parents would figure that out. Or send a representative, like Abraham did his servant, to find a wife. Like Isaac had no choice in his wife. It was whoever the servant brought back is who he's going to marry, and he's going to say, Thank you for bringing me a wife. And that is the end of discussion. He does not get to pick. As a 40-year-old man, the inheritor of Abraham's entire huge estate, he gets no say in who he marries. It's whoever daddy's favorite servant brings back is who he's going to marry. And so typically, patriarch and matriarch would find the spouses. Patriarch dies, older brother would. You don't have any of that. It's gonna, it could potentially be really hard to find a husband because who's gonna give you your dowry? Who's gonna organize it all? Yeah, you know, but allowing these orphan girls, or at least fatherless girls, to inherit makes it so that they can find husbands because the husband has financial reason to marry them. And that sounds horrible from our perspective. Like, oh, he's only marrying me for my money. In the Old Testament, in the Bible, we don't have to be comfortable with this. We like love matches, we like emotionally laden love matches. In the ancient world, marriage is a business arrangement between two families, first and foremost. They are dowries, bride prices, those sorts of things are familial investment in a new family business. Think of it that way. Think of it as I am investing $20,000 in your small business right up the front. And this marriage is what's kicking off that small business. Um, we're not buying-selling women. We are investing in a business. These are business relationships, these are family relationships. We think of like King Solomon marrying all the foreign wives to make like treaties between nations because he's a king. Well, families did this on the small level by which family do I want to be more closely connected with? Which family would bring our household better business connections, which family um would be able to help us in time of need. Those sorts of social concerns drive a lot of marriages. Daughters inheriting land allow them to play that game and have a future. Another really interesting tidbit about inheritance that I learned when reading Carol Myers is that once they are in the land of Israel, the land of Israel is exceptionally, especially like the Judean hillside and Galilee. It's a lot of, it's rocky, it's rough terrain, it's hilly, you have to do terraced farming. Um,

Why Land Stays With Tribes

Jessica LM Jenkins 26:13

it is not at all like the farming in central United States or central Canada, where you have plains that go on for hundreds of square miles that is just flat farming land. Each of the properties that Israel is going to inherit for each household, each property is going to be kind of a different puzzle. You have to figure out how to make this exceptionally difficult to farm land, produce enough food to feed your household. That means you may have to grow legumes in this corner and wheat and barley over here and plant trees over there. And there's a lot of ecological knowledge that will be needed for each of these plots of lands. And because inheritance typically goes through the male line, and the men are the ones out doing most of the field work, women would step in when they needed to or during the big harvest and stuff. But men are out doing most of the field work. They're the ones passing down specific, necessary, ecological knowledge from grandfather to father to son. Because family, the Smiths family's homestead, what they have to do to make that land really thrive might be very different than what the Jones family has to do for their homestead. And so men staying on their ancestral land with their specific family ecological knowledge makes a lot of sense. And it's really helpful for thriving families. Now, knowledge base, men inherit ecological knowledge from their parents and grandparents, knowledge base, ecology, okay? Where you plant what, where the water is, how the sun shade, all of those things. Women, their knowledge base they inherit from their grandmother and mother, inherit their taught, both sides. Um, they inherit technology knowledge, how to spin, how to weave, how to make an oven, how to grind grain. Women were doing technologically sophisticated work, and they had complete intellectual property rights to pottery, weaving, bread, all of these things that were absolutely necessary for the family. So the men have this absolutely necessary ecological knowledge. Women have this absolutely necessary technological knowledge. But women moving into a new household or a new town or a new village actually spreads that technology out. That technological knowledge can shift between communities and actually benefit everyone by bringing different techniques. It's not local, it's not tied to a specific plot of land the same way men's ecological knowledge is. So that's a little bit of like just fingers in the dirt kind of insight into why, for Israel, some of this primarily male inheritance made sense because you're not just inheriting the physical land, you're inheriting the knowledge needed to care for that land. And so the the law is passed. Daughters inherit right after sons. This changes everything for all of Israel. Well, numbers 36, some other people come back to Moses with a concern. They come back with a concern about that previous law. So let me read you Numbers 36, 1 through 12. What the passages I'm reading today are my own translation of the Hebrew, um, even though I'm not using the names. So Numbers 36, 1 through 12. And then the heads of the

Numbers 36 Marriage Within Tribe

Jessica LM Jenkins 29:55

fathers, households, the heads of the fathers from the clans of the sons of Gilead, the son of Makar, the son of Manasseh, from the clans of the sons of Joseph, so same basic, so the same tribe and family as um Zehaliph, they came forward and they spoke before Moses and the leaders of the heads of the sons of Israel, and they said, My lord, the Lord commanded you to give land as an inheritance by lot to the sons of Israel. And then my Lord received a command from the Lord to give an inherit to give the inheritance of Zalephad, our brother, to his daughters. They're just reviewing everything we learned about in the previous passage. Now, it could be that one of the sons of a different tribe of Israel could marry these daughters, um, and their inheritance would then be taken from our tribe to the inheritance of the other tribe. And so from uh the and from the allotment of our inheritance, it would be taken away. And then certainly in the year of Jubilee, it would go to this other tribe, and and the daughters of Zeophad, their inheritance would be added to the inheritance of the tribe they marry into. And so the inheritance of our tribe would be taken away by their inheritance transferring. Okay, I'm gonna stop there and try to explain this argument because so what the these men are coming and they're saying, okay, so we get the law, daughters inherit, but and they keep using daughters of Zelaliphad as an example because it's like the case that the law came down to. So, but it applies to all daughters. So they come and they say, Okay, we hear law, daughters inherit. But problem, if the daughters of the tribe of Joseph, of Manasseh, marry into the tribe of, say, Benjamin, then they will take land that is supposed to go to the tribe of Manasseh and move it, that land will become part of the tribe of Joseph. I mean, of Benjamin, we were saying hypothetically. Then they will take land that is supposed to go to the tribe of Manasseh and move it, that land will become part of the tribe of Joseph. I mean, of Benjamin, we were saying hypothetically. And so therefore, the tribe of Manasseh will lose some of its ancestral land. This is the problem they were bringing before because women marry into different families. And so they would, if they inherit, they could take that land and then it's all gonna get mixed up and this is gonna be confusion. And the tribes as a whole, remember that second bucket will lose some of the inheritance promised to the tribe on a tribal level by God. And they're saying that's not cool. So let me continue. Verse 5. Then Moses commanded the sons of Israel, saying, Correct, the the tribe of Joseph is correct in what they are saying. So this is what the Lord says. He's going to amend the previous ruling. This is the word which the Lord commands for the daughters of Zahaliphat, saying, For the good in their eyes they will be wives, basically. They can marry whoever they want. However, they need to marry within the tribe of their father. They can marry whoever they want as long as it's within the tribe. The inheritance of the sons of Israel will not wander from tribe to tribe, for each man in the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers will cleave, hold on to that inheritance. Each daughter who takes possession of an inheritance from the tribe of the sons of Israel, each daughter who takes possession of an inheritance will take that into the tribe she marries. So, in order that the sons of Israel possess the inheritance of his fathers, and so that the inheritance will not wander from tribe to tribe, for a man must hold on to his inheritance from his tribe as the Lord commanded. So the girls need to marry within their tribe. A lot of legal Hebrew language to get that said. I'm summarizing a little bit. So verse 10 As the Lord commanded, thus the daughters of Zehaliphad did. And they were Milah, Tizra, Hogla, Milka, and Noah, the daughters of Zalephad, and they married their cousins. Which interestingly, the cousins don't have names. The men they married do not have names. So it's in effect that these women seem to be the face of these households, at least as far as this specific legal proceeding is happening. And so from the clans of the sons of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, they were wives. They found their husbands. And then their inheritance stayed within the tribe of the clan of their father. So basically, what's going on in the Numbers 36 is men from the tribe come in and say, hey, if the girls leave, they'll take the inheritance with them. That's dangerous. The Lord's like, yes, okay, so daughters inherit after sons, but if they inherit, they have to marry within the tribe. So that's the second bucket. The nation's the biggest bucket, the tribe is the second bucket. They still have a ton of options within the tribe. And I would probably wager most of the time you married within your tribe anyway. So this is not a hardship. It's not like you have a town of 100 people and you have to only marry in that town. No, it's like marry someone in the state of Texas. Don't go to Arkansas, just marry someone in the state of Texas. Okay, there's lots of people in Texas. We can make this happen. Um, and the women who inherit need to marry within their tribe. Because part of the argument of the men coming to Moses in this passage, one um author I was reading said, this illustrates the ancient legal principle that a group has the right to be kept intact. So the daughter's original argument is that their father had a right for his name to not pass away and vanish, that we need to care for the dead and to keep their name connected to inheritance for the longevity. And Moses agreed, yeah, we care for that. We and we care that women are fully included into the covenant of the Lord with the symbol of the land. Second part is, but also the group deserves to be kept intact. They are very group-focused people. Again, households, clans, tribe. The group deserves to be kept intact because the group is tied to the land. And then they need to keep that land with the family. They don't see, like we buy and sell houses constantly, but they don't, and like the house my children was born in, I might be a little sad, like moving out of that house. This actually isn't that house. Um, I might be a little sad, but it's not like I have ancestral ties to this land. Um, the ancient world did. They saw the land as part of the household. The household was, we think of people, my family is my husband, me and my two kids. Um, my bed, my couch, my dog, my chairs, my silverware. All of those things are just things. You know, I don't consider them as part of the house. They're definitely not family. And the ancient people obviously viewed people as more than animals and physical objects, but the household included the land and the movable goods like bedding and furniture and storage and the animals. All of this is kind of considered part of the household. They don't separate out categories as much as we do. And so keeping these groups whole is really important. So let's move on to the final passage, Joshua 17. So the numbers passage those passages happen during the wilderness wandering after the um census where they determine how many households are going to make up each tribe as they allot inheritance throughout. And so Joshua 17, they're actually moving into the land. And so, once again, uh, I'm assuming they're married at this point because Numbers 36

Joshua 17 The Ruling Applied

Jessica LM Jenkins 38:00

said they married within their father's tribe. So at this point, these women are married, which I find exceptionally interesting. So married women now, potentially single before, now definitely married. Let's read Joshua 17, 3 through 6. And Zephad, the son of Hephur, Gilead, the son of Mekar, the son of Manasseh, had no sons, because only daughters. And these are the names of his daughters, Mahla, Noah, Hogla, Milka, and Tizrah. And then they came forward before Eliezer the priest, and before Joshua the son of Nun, and before the leaders, saying, The Lord commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brothers. And then Joshua gave to them according to the mouth the command of the Lord, an inheritance among the brothers of their father. And then the inheritance of Manasseh fell in groups of ten, um, besides the land of Gilead and Bishon, which was on the east of the Jordan. For the daughters of Manasseh, so not just the daughters of Zelephad, but all the daughters of Manasseh inherited an inheritance among her sons, when the law decreed they should, and the land of Gilead was to the sons of Manasseh who are left over. And so we have all the legal wranglings to make sure the law is just in the book of Numbers. Now the rubber meets the road. According to the storyline of ancient Israel, as we see in the Old Testament, now they've moved into the land, and the daughters are saying, okay, this was the law, this was the decree, we are now asking for our inheritance. And Joshua gives it to them. But interestingly, as I've already said, their husbands aren't coming and being like, Hey, by the way, I married a daughter of Zelephad, so give us the inheritance. No, the daughters, as married women, are coming as the face of their families, of their households, saying, We deserve this inheritance. Please give it to us. So there is a lot going on in the stories of the daughter of the Eliphad. Some people want to make this kind of a feminist passage about women's rights and all of this other thing. Um, which, hey, I love a good women's rights story. But I don't see this as women's rights. I see this as God caring for his people in a multitude of ways. Because again, women's rights predisposes individualism

What This Teaches About Belonging

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and it predisposes competition, for lack of a better term, between the genders, because you're dealing with individuals of different genders who need separate things. The ancient world, you're dealing with households. The smallest unit of society is the household, and it is mixed gender because it has people in it of that are male and female. And so the idea of women's rights doesn't necessarily exist in the ancient world, and that's not what these ladies are going for. They're not going for, hey, we should have rights too. They are coming and saying, we are concerned about our family heritage vanishing. We are concerned about our father's afterlife. We are concerned about who belongs to the covenant of God, because the covenant is pictured through the land. And if we don't have a father and we are not tied to the land, then are we part of the covenant? They are cons they have covenant afterlife belonging questions. And what God says is yes, even in circumstances that just happen to not work out, you do belong. And belonging to the people of Israel is less about having a perfect pedigree. You are a man over the age of 20, and it is more about faithfulness and a keeping of the law. So the daughters of Zeophad, they are brave, strong women who stand up for what they need and what their household needs, their father's household. They are advocating for those who cannot advocate for themselves. Um, Drew Johnson in his book on the Mosaic Law brings out one major theme of the Mosaic Law is caring for the vulnerable. That's a continual theme in the Mosaic Law, caring for the vulnerable. In this case, you have daughters caring for their deceased father, caring for their household as a whole. You have elders caring for the tribe as a whole, because the tribe was vulnerable to being kind of torn apart a little bit. And you have all of these concerns looking out for the group as a whole. There is a mindset here of caring for the whole, of saying, these are my people, and I have to watch out for them, and I want to keep this group intact. And so God is working to show that faithfulness is what includes people in the covenant, and that their concerns about family and tribal unity matter. God cares about unity. And he also, which I love, gets to show that yes, women have fantastic legal insights as well. I love it when he's like, yes, they are right. Like God is just like rubber stamp everything they said, go with that. And I think it's amazing how we often come to the text, we think of women as silent um flies on the wall for a lot of scripture. I heard somebody say this week that it's like one woman for every 10 men in the Bible that are named. But here in this passage, we have five women who are named against their one male father. And then you have no names of their husbands. Their voices matter. God cares about their voice, he cares about their future, and he cares about the wholeness of their family that has been broken by death and sin. And God steps in and he says, That matters. And I also see all the other families that the same situation will affect, and I'm going to make a ruling. That is broad enough for all of them. Thank you so much for joining me this week for this episode about Property Law and the Daughters of Zello Fad. DM me or email me any questions you have on this, and I can't wait to talk to you more later. I'm not gonna promise it's the next episode, but shortly coming up, another episode we are going to have will be about matriarchal authority in the

Listener Questions And Closing Blessing

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home. So if you have questions, I've mentioned it a little bit in this episode. If you have questions like, what's the deal with matriarchs? What did they have authority over? What did that look like? DM me or email me those questions so I can make sure to answer them in that episode when I finally get it recorded. Thank you so much. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May His make His face shine upon you and give you peace. Have a great day.