Numbers 27:3-4 “Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among Korah’s followers, who banded together against the Lord, but he died for his own sin and left no sons. 4 Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s relatives.”
Inheritance distribution can be a tricky thing. Many a family has been blown apart during the distribution. Or should I say, the distribution became the catalyst that drove the divisions that already existed to be manifested. The death of the family member did not cause the split. The split was already there.
I know of a family where the brothers never spoke to each other after the father’s death. There had been divisions before that time, but the distribution of the estate in unequal shares became the excuse for non-contact. That is a shame. The death nail had been driven, and it hit solid wood sealing the relationship at a distance.
Our text seems a bit out of place, at least a first. This portion of Numbers is dealing with the distribution of the Promised Land according to ancestry. Larger clans were to get larger portions of land, and smaller smaller. But what about the exceptions? Our text deals with one of those exceptions.
Most couples during this time in history had many children, always in the hopes of having a son to carry on the family name and receive the distribution of the inheritance when the patriarch dies. But on rare occasions, no male children are born and survive. What do we do in those circumstances?
We have five daughters of one man and woman. The man has died. Who will get his inheritance?
In our culture, these five daughters would receive the land after their mother had died. But in their culture, the wife does not have right to inheritance, only the children. Unfair from our point of view, yes. But that was not the situation then.
So the daughters bring this question to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the other leaders. This is a puzzle with implications far beyond this case. Should daughters always get a portion alongside the sons? Should wives retain possession of property when their husbands die?
But what we find out is that the LORD answers this case, but not all the implications involved. He gives and answer to Moses for these five daughters that fits the situation of land distribution and nothing more. The question they raise is about land distribution, not about their position in society.
The answer provides for the continuance of the family line of their father. They are not cut out of the upcoming distribution of blessing. They are provided for by the LORD. The preference is for the inheritance to go to male descendants and relatives first. That is their culture, and the LORD’s answer does not change that.
So these five daughters will get the portion of land their father would have received if he were alive. And land means wealth, life, the ability to provide food for a family. But this did not remove the cultural pressure to marry and have children, especially male children, to pass the inherited land to after their deaths. Some things take more than one decision to settle.
But this is an important accommodation to meet the needs of all the people of God who are moving into the Promised Land. Land meant everything. So losing land meant losing a future for the whole family. Now these daughters can continue to enjoy a future in the land when they arrive.
Our inheritance laws today stem in large part from these laid out in the Hebrew Bible. We can literally thank the LORD for this guidance!
The Arnold Journey 