With Chapter 36, we come to the end of the seemingly interminable Book of Numbers. It ends anticlimactically, straightening out a problem -- or a problem at least within the constrained world of patriarchal inheritance -- created in Numbers 27, when the daughters of Zelophehad were allowed to inherit because he had no male heirs. It occurs to some of Zelophehad's male relatives that if the heiresses marry outside the tribe, the inheritance will pass to the tribe of their husbands, and we can't have that, now can we? So God orders them to marry within the tribe. That's it.
The allocation of land and property among the tribes has been a major concern of the Book of Numbers. Indeed, that seems to be the main point of the (fictional) censuses that give the book its name, since the land of Israel is to be apportioned according to numbers. So that is a basic rationale for the entire book, to justify the structure of society in Josiah's kingdom. But with the Roman conquest and the diaspora all of this ceased to be relevant. As far as I know even among the most fundamentalist orthodox Jews there is no movement to restore the tribal structure of the nationality. I would also just note the haphazard construction of the book. The separation of chapters 27 and 36 is typical. There is a broad underlying chronology, but the structure is otherwise random, with no effort too keep related material together.
I will provide an introduction to Deuteronomy, along with the first chapter, on Wednesday.
36 The family heads of the clan of Gilead son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, who were from the clans of the descendants of Joseph, came and spoke before Moses and the leaders, the heads of the Israelite families. 2 They said, “When the Lord commanded my lord to give the land as an inheritance to the Israelites by lot, he ordered you to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters. 3 Now suppose they marry men from other Israelite tribes; then their inheritance will be taken from our ancestral inheritance and added to that of the tribe they marry into. And so part of the inheritance allotted to us will be taken away. 4 When the Year of Jubilee for the Israelites comes, their inheritance will be added to that of the tribe into which they marry, and their property will be taken from the tribal inheritance of our ancestors.”
5 Then at the Lord’s command Moses gave this order to the Israelites: “What the tribe of the descendants of Joseph is saying is right. 6 This is what the Lord commands for Zelophehad’s daughters: They may marry anyone they please as long as they marry within their father’s tribal clan. 7 No inheritance in Israel is to pass from one tribe to another, for every Israelite shall keep the tribal inheritance of their ancestors. 8 Every daughter who inherits land in any Israelite tribe must marry someone in her father’s tribal clan, so that every Israelite will possess the inheritance of their ancestors. 9 No inheritance may pass from one tribe to another, for each Israelite tribe is to keep the land it inherits.”
10 So Zelophehad’s daughters did as the Lord commanded Moses. 11 Zelophehad’s daughters—Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milkah and Noah—married their cousins on their father’s side. 12 They married within the clans of the descendants of Manasseh son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in their father’s tribe and clan.
13 These are the commands and regulations the Lord gave through Moses to the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.
2 comments:
Interesting that the family heads came to speak to Moses about their concern--and then somehow the Lord gives his command about keeping the inheritances withing the tribes. It's like Moses is the Lord's right-hand man, to the point where, "Hey, you wanna voice your concerns, talk to Moses. He'll talk to me, and I'll talk back to you through Moses. He's the man."
In Judaism, Moses is just a man, not a prophet. But in any other religion I know of, he'd be considered a prophet because he talks with god on a regular basis.
That's correct, Moses is the intermediary between Yahweh and the people. He is unquestionably a prophet, essentially in the role of Mohamed. The basic conceit of the Torah is that God dictated it to Moses, which is why the Torah is also called the Books of Moses. Of course, as I continually emphasize, it was written thousands of years after Moses supposedly existed, whereas Mohamed was a real historical figure who did indeed recite Quran, although much of Quran is derivative. The actual sources of the Torah are not really known, although there is much scholarly reasoning and speculation about it which I have alluded to from time to time. The main thing to keep in mind is that the fundamental motivation is to justify the society as it was at the time of King Josiah: to legitimize the authority and privileges of the Levite priesthood, the patriarchy, and the property rights of the tribes, as well as to promote militant nationalism and disparage the humanity of Israel's rivals.
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