Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- Feminist criticism; Women in the Bible
8 And every daughter, that possesseth an inheritance in any tribe of
the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the
tribe of her father, that the children of Israel may enjoy every man
the inheritance of his fathers.
10 Even is the Lord commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad:
11 ...... and were turned unto their father's brothers' sons.
In a former chapter there was a sense of justice shown towards the
daughters of Zelophehad, but here a new complication arises. The uncles
of these girls had their eyes on the property and perhaps feared that
their sons had not found favor in the eyes of their cousins, as they
might have seen and admired some fine looking young men from other
tribes. So the crafty old uncles moved in time to get a statute passed
that would compel daughters to marry in the tribe of their fathers and
got a direct command from the Lord to that effect, then the young
women, compelled to limit their predilections, married their cousins,
setting the laws of heredity quite aside; property in all ages being
considered of more importance than persons. Thus, after making some
show of justice in giving the daughters of Zelophehad the inheritance
of their fathers, the Israelites began to consider the loss to their
tribe, if peradventure the five sisters should marry into other tribes
and all this property be transferred to their enemies.
They seemed to consider these noble women destitute of the virtue of
patriotism, of family pride, of all the tender sentiments of
friendship, kindred and home, and so with their usual masculine
arrogance they passed laws to compel the daughters of Zelophehad to do
what they probably would have done had there been no law to that
effect. These daughters were known by the euphonious names of Mahlah,
Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah, and they all married their father's
brothers' sons. Cousins on the mother's side would probably have been
forbidden.
If Moses, as the mouthpiece of God, aimed to do exact justice, why did
he not pass an ordinance giving property in all cases equally to sons
and daughters.
E. C. S..
Moses gave what appears to be, in the light of this Christian era, a
just judgment when he decided that the daughters of Zelophehad should
inherit their father's property, but he gave as the law of inheritance
the direction that "if a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause
his inheritance to pass unto his daughter;" thus, as I think, unjustly
discriminating between women who have brothers and women who have none,
and he goes on further to deal unjustly with women when he directs that
the daughters of Zelophehad marry so that the inheritance justly
awarded them should not go out of the family of the tribe of their
fathers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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