Who Were the Daughters of Zelophehad

Five sisters had a problem that no law yet covered. Their father had died without sons, the land was about to be divided by family name, and his name was about to vanish from the map. In Numbers 27, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah brought that problem before Moses together, and God answered that they were right. This guide asks what their petition teaches about bringing a just cause to God as a group, then has you practice it. You will read the petition closely, test what made it just, weigh a hard follow-up in Numbers 36, and draft a shared appeal of your own. Alone, plan on about an hour. A group of three to ten should plan on seventy-five minutes, or split it into two meetings at the practice section.

Have Numbers 26:33, Numbers 27:1-11, Numbers 36:1-12 and Joshua 17:3-6 open. Bring paper. You will write one thing together near the end.

Start with what you notice

Read Numbers 27:1-11 once straight through, out loud if you are in a group. Do not interpret yet. Just list what you see. These prompts keep the list concrete:

• Count the people and groups named in verses 1-2. Who is present when the sisters speak?
• Mark every “we,” “us” and “our.” Does any one sister speak for herself alone?
• Find the moment Moses stops acting on his own. What does he do instead?
• Compare what God gives in verse 7 with what God adds in verse 8. Are they the same?

Numbers 27:2 sets the scene: “And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying.” Five women with no father and no brothers chose the most public place in the camp. They did not send a representative or split up to lobby separate leaders.

Now look at Numbers 26:33. The sisters are already named in the census taken just before this. Their names were on the record before their case came up.

Read the argument the way they built it

The petition is two verses long, and every clause does work. Read Numbers 27:3-4 slowly:

Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father.

Break it into parts. In a group, give one part to each reader:

1. The facts: their father died, and he had no sons.
2. The record cleared: he was not part of Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16). They answer an objection before anyone raises it.
3. The harm named: his name will be “done away” from his family.
4. The specific request: a possession among their father’s brothers. Nothing more, nothing vague.

Then read Numbers 27:5: “And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.” Quonekuia Day, who teaches at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, reads this as a sign of how hard the case was. In her words, Moses “doesn’t have any idea what to do with this case.” The leader did not pretend to have an answer he lacked. He carried the cause to the one who did.

God answers in Numbers 27:7: “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.” Day puts it simply: “God turns around and says, the women are right.” Verse 8 then turns one family’s case into standing law for every family in Israel. The sisters asked for themselves. God answered for everyone in their position.

What made their cause just

The rest of the guide builds on this point. The sisters did not win because they were bold. Plenty of bold requests are wrong. Their boldness was attached to a cause that fit what God had already said.

The land was promised, not up for grabs. Addressing readers who worry that the sisters were bargaining for land that belonged to others, Day answers, “It’s not like they’re going to take land that they are not promised.” The sisters argued from inside God’s own promise. Land was being divided by family name, so a faithful man’s name should not disappear because he had daughters.

That gives a group something it can test. The text itself raises four questions a cause can be weighed against:

• Is someone being left out of something God has already promised or commanded?
• Have we told the truth about the whole situation, including the parts that could count against us, the way the sisters addressed Korah?
• Is our request specific enough that an answer could be recognized?
• Are we bringing it to the right place, and are we willing to let God decide?

Day draws a wide conclusion from the passage: if you bring God a just cause, “you’ll get a just answer.” Read that carefully. Numbers 27 shows what kind of God hears a case. It does not promise that every request comes out the way the people asking hope. A just answer may include a limit nobody expected, as Numbers 36 shows.

One voice, five names

Day applies the sisters’ unity directly to the church: “We wanna move out with boldness, but we just don’t wanna move out on our own. We wanna move out collectively as a group.”

One voice did not mean one anonymous mass. Numbers 26 and 27 name all five sisters, which Day calls “an amazing moment because you don’t have women named that often in the Bible.” In this story, shared appeal keeps each person visible.

Day also locates the source of their courage. She reads the passage as a moment where “God speaks through the women, he gives them the boldness.” The text does not narrate God giving them courage beforehand, so treat this as her reading. It fits what the passage does show: God receives their speech, confirms it in verse 7, and makes it law in verse 8. If God stands behind their words that fully, a group preparing to speak can ask him for courage before it asks who among them is brave enough. The practice below includes that step.

When a second petition arrives

Read Numbers 36:1-12. The leaders of the sisters’ own clan bring a new concern. If the daughters marry into another tribe, the land leaves Manasseh. Moses answers according to the word of the Lord, and verse 6 sets the result: “Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry.”

Day notes that womanist interpreters tend to read this as the women being forced to marry, and that some critics fault Moses here for a perceived failure to go to God. That reading has textual grounds. The sisters do not speak in chapter 36. Men of the clan raise the concern, the ruling limits the women’s choices to protect tribal holdings, and verses 10-12 report that the sisters married their cousins. Day disagrees: “I don’t see the numbers 36 passage as a command that they must marry in order to inherit.” Her reading also has grounds. Nothing in chapter 36 revokes or conditions the inheritance from chapter 27. Verse 6 restricts the tribe of the husband, not the right to land. It also says “to whom they think best,” and verse 5 presents the ruling as the Lord’s word, not Moses improvising.

Try this before moving on. Have one person state the forced-marriage reading in two sentences, using only verses from Numbers 36. Have another state Day’s reading the same way. Each speaker must satisfy someone who holds the other view that the summary is fair. Then name the single verse where the two readings most clearly divide.

Notice what the chapter shows either way. A just petition was followed by another concern, raised by another group, and God heard both. A community that brings causes together has to be ready for the next petition, including one that complicates its own.

Then read Joshua 17:3-6. Under a new leader, in a new land, the sisters come back and say: “The LORD commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren” (Joshua 17:4). They do not reargue the case. They point to what God already said. Trusting God’s justice here looks like patience and memory as much as a single public moment.

A practice: prepare a shared appeal

This works for a small group, a ministry team, a family or a few friends. If you are alone, do the first three steps yourself, then ask one or two trusted people to do the rest with you.

1. Name a cause, not a grievance. Choose something in your church or community where a person or group risks being left out of something good. Keep it outside anyone’s private story unless that person chooses to share. Nobody has to bring a personal situation.
2. Test it against the promise. Find one passage of Scripture that speaks to what is being withheld. If you cannot, discuss honestly whether this is a just cause or a preference. That conversation counts as progress.
3. Clear the record. Like verse 3, write down the strongest objection someone could raise against your cause. Answer it truthfully, or admit you cannot yet.
4. Write the petition together. In three sentences or fewer, state the facts, the harm and the specific request. Revise until everyone present can say it is accurate.
5. Ask for boldness first. Before praying the petition, pray together for the courage this cause will require. Name where the group is most tempted to go quiet: the meeting, the conversation, the follow-up.
6. Bring it before God, together. Pray the petition aloud as a group. Then each person names, silently or aloud, one way the answer might come that would be hard to accept.
7. Identify the next door. Moses was the proper place for the sisters’ case. Who is the proper person or body for yours: an elder board, a ministry leader, a school, a city office? Decide on one step, who will take it, and whether they go alone or with others.

If your cause involves someone’s safety, praying about it does not replace contacting the people whose job is to protect them. Do both.

Questions for discussion

1. The sisters went to the most public place in the camp. When is a public, shared appeal wiser than a private one, and when might it do harm?
2. Verse 3 answers an objection before anyone raises it. What would change in how your group handles disagreement if you named the strongest case against your own position first?
3. Moses brought the case to God instead of deciding it himself. What keeps leaders you know from admitting they do not have an answer, and what would make that easier?
4. Numbers 36 raises a competing concern that God also takes seriously. How would your group tell a fair complication apart from an attempt to undo a just outcome?
5. In Joshua 17 the sisters return years later to claim what was already ruled. What would your group need in order to remember a commitment and come back to it after the energy of the first appeal fades?

For whoever is leading

The common drift in this study is toward cheering the sisters and skipping the testing. Slow down at the section on what made the cause just. If the group picks a cause quickly, give step three of the practice real time.

Expect some people to feel strongly about Numbers 36. The restating task exists for that reason. Day names the disagreement among scholars and says, “I wish that we all interacted with each other with less hostility.” Hold the group to the rule that nobody responds to a reading until they have restated it fairly.

Keep personal disclosure optional throughout. A person can take full part while saying nothing about their own life.

Before you meet again

Reread the petition you wrote together. Ask three things of it. Does it say only what is true? Does it ask only for what God has promised? Does it leave the verdict where Moses left it, with God? Change any sentence that fails one of those tests, and bring the revised version to your next meeting.