God’s Word for You

Numbers 27:1-7 The inheritance of women

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, December 27, 2021

Zelophehad’s Daughters

God’s people were preparing to enter into Canaan. The nation had won several victories, such as those over Sihon and Og, the Amorite kings, but there was undoubtedly many small individual matters to be resolved. Two of the more important cases are presented in this chapter. The first is the case of Zelophehad’s daughters, and the second is the matter of Moses’ successor.

27 Then the daughters of Zelophehad came forward. (Zelophehad was the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, from the clans of Manasseh the son of Joseph.) These were the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milkah, and Tirzah.

The names here are fascinating and mysterious. Christians have noticed the order of their names and the apparent symbolic significance, but we must consider the possibility that their parents did not have such a perfect message in mind when they gave their girls these names. At the same time, the meaning of names in the Old Testament generally have far more importance than they do today. Along with their father, their names have these meanings (Noah, the second daughter, spelled her name differently from Noah the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth):

Zelophehad: “The Shadow of Fear”
Mahlah: “Infirm”
Noah: “Wandering”
Hoglah: “Dancing for Joy”
Milkah: “Queen”
Tirzah: “Delight”

Since ancient times, this list has been compared with our salvation from sin to glory. The usual way of putting it goes like this: We are born in the ‘shadow of fear’ (Zelophehad, Psalm 23:4; Ecclesiastes 8:13) in our sinful state, and therefore our souls are sick and ‘infirm’ (Mahlah, Proverbs 13:12). This leads to nothing but spiritual ‘wandering’ (Noah, Psalm 107:4) with no hope of salvation. But, rescued by Christ, we ‘dance for joy’ (Hoglah, cp. Jeremiah 31:13). (Hoglah can also mean ‘turn for joy,’ and we are certainly turned about from death to new life in Christ through faith, 1 Thessalonians 1:9). This brings us to the point of being given a special ‘royal’ status by Christ (Milkah, Revelation 1:6), and God will ‘delight’ (Tirzah, Song of Solomon 4:10) in us.

While this is interesting and perhaps even ingenious, it would not be wise to use this list as a proof text for the order of salvation. However, it could be used without any hesitation as an example for parents who want to give some thought to their children’s names. As a pastor who baptizes many babies, my growing concern in the past few years is for parents who try to give their children names that they want pronounced a certain way, but are not spelled in such a way that the pronunciation would be helped by the letters they choose. “Chyd,” for example, will not be pronounced “Chad” by anyone. Nor will anybody say “Nicole” if the parents want to spell it “Nickle.” The devil wants modern man to lose track of language as a useful tool because he hates the word of God, especially the external, spoken and preached word. How terrified Satan is of the name of Jesus (Mark 1:24)! He is making progress in the destruction of language and grammar, because his ultimate goal is to destroy the trust that average men and women have in language; to make people think that words do not have to mean what they say.

And more, the devil tries to attack preaching by manipulating preachers into pulpits who don’t know the difference between law and gospel, who don’t know what baptism is for, who mix up the point of the sacraments, and who try to make the pulpit into a crowbar to force people to comply to their personal sense of morality rather than being concerned with the status of their eternal souls. The devil is the original and only true monster. He is never your friend, he is always your enemy. Luther said, “The devil can’t have any other intention than to destroy us because he’s the foe of Christ and doesn’t worry about his punishment, which he knows is imminent….The best thing we can do, therefore, is to put our fists together and pray. Even if we don’t keep the Ten Commandments, but rather sin against them, we have the Lord’s Prayer to set over against them… Let us put our trust in Christ” (LW 54:94).

2 They stood at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before Moses and Eleazar the priest, before the tribal chiefs and the entire community. They said, 3 “Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among the company of those who gathered together against the Lord along with the followers of Korah, but he died in his own sin. He had no sons. 4 Why should the name of our father be taken away from a place among his clan, because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s brothers.”

The complaint that the women raised was an important one. It may not have been the only case of this kind, but clearly it was the first, and it set a precedent to be followed from then on. The man, Zelophehad, died without begetting any sons. Would his family—their family—die out because they had no allotment in the Promised Land? They point out that he did not die in any of the rebellions, such as Korah’s followers, but was one of the Israelites who died because of the general revolt when the spies returned and the whole adult part of the nation was condemned to die without entering into the land of Canaan. All of the other families received an inheritance, but like almost all ancient cultures, there was no provision for women in their circumstance.

5 Moses brought their case before the LORD. 6 The LORD spoke to Moses: 7 “What the daughters of Zelophehad say is correct. You must give them property as an inheritance among their father’s brothers. You are to allow their father’s inheritance to be passed down to them.

The Lord agreed with the dead man’s daughters. They should be able to receive an inheritance. Later on we will see a modification in this law, and the daughters were required to marry men from the same tribe (their cousins, Numbers 36:6). This was so that Zelophehad’s land would remain within his ancestral tribe, which happened to be that of Manasseh (verse 1 above). It may be that this is why the order of the girls’ names is given differently in Numbers 36:11, with Noah last, if that order reflects the order in which they were married.

Women are cared for in the Bible and among God’s people in ways that often astonished Israel’s neighbors, where women were virtually slaves. As recently as Victorian times (the 1850s) and into the early 20th century, women had almost no legal status in many countries, without the right to vote in countries where voting is the norm (voting is not advocated in the Bible). Some women found ways to exploit this system, however, such as the documented case of a 19th century woman who cranked out forged coins in London without her husband knowing anything about it until he was arrested for forgery and imprisoned, while she was considered to be completely innocent under English law since it was, to them, unthinkable that a respectably married woman would commit a crime unless forced to by her husband. But for God’s people, women are baptized and have the same inheritance in God’s kingdom as men. Christ “has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen” (Revelation 1:6).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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