Numbers36chapter 36

Numbers 36:1-2

The heads of Gilead bring the fourth case in Numbers that the law as given does not settle, after the men defiled by a dead body at 9:6-8, the sabbath-breaker at 15:32-36, and the daughters themselves at 27:1-11. They come near and speak before Moses and the princes, which is the approach the daughters made at 27:2, so the second hearing opens the way the first one did. What they raise is a collision between two things already commanded, the land divided by lot at 26:55 and the inheritance granted to Zelophehad's daughters at 27:7.

Numbers 36:3-4

The objection is a consequence chapter 27 never addressed. A daughter who holds land and marries into another tribe carries that land with her, and the lot of Manasseh shrinks by the size of her portion. Verse 4 answers the remedy a reader would reach for, since the jubilee of Leviticus 25:10-13 restores land that was sold and land carried over by inheritance belongs to the receiving tribe outright, so the jubilee would fix the transfer in place. Albert Barnes states it in those terms, that the jubilee year would in effect confirm the alienation.

Numbers 36:5-6

The answer given through Moses calls the objection right, the tribe of the sons of Joseph hath said well. A ruling delivered at 27:7 is refined here because a second party was heard, and the Torah records the amendment plainly. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call this progressive legislation and observe that the additions of this kind fall in civil matters while the laws of worship take no such change. The liberty of the first ruling survives in the second, let them marry to whom they think best, with the limit set at the family of the tribe of their father.

Numbers 36:7-9

The case of one family becomes a standing law for every heiress in Israel, and verses 7 and 9 state the same principle twice in almost the same words. The tribal map drawn by lot at 26:55 is meant to hold, so each tribe keeps to the inheritance of its fathers. John Gill and John Wesley both read a further purpose in the law, that tribe and family stay traceable so the descent of the Messiah could be identified when he came, and Eusebius argues Mary's tribe from Joseph's on the same ground in his Ecclesiastical History. The reading belongs to those writers, since the reason Numbers gives is that every man may enjoy the inheritance of his fathers.

Numbers 36:10-12

The five sisters are named for the third time in the book, and the order differs from 26:33 and 27:1 because Tirzah and Noah trade places. Gill reports the older explanations, Aben Ezra taking this order as the order of their marriages and Jarchi taking the variation as a sign that none of the five was preferred above another. They marry their father's brothers' sons, first cousins inside the family of Hepher, and Joshua 17:3-6 records the same women receiving their portion when Canaan is actually divided.

Numbers 36:13

The book signs off by fixing a place, in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho. Leviticus had closed with its commandments given in mount Sinai at 27:34, and the change of address is the measure of what happened in between. The last thing Numbers records is a case raised by ordinary men and settled in their favour, and Deuteronomy opens in these same plains with Moses beginning to speak.