Nombres 36

The inheritance of daughters who marry

¹Then the heads of the families in the clan of Gilead’s descendants came forward. Gilead was the son of Machir, son of Manasseh, and belonged to the clans of Joseph’s descendants. They spoke before Moses and the leaders, the heads of the ancestral families of the Israelites. ²They said, “The LORD commanded you, my lord, to give the land to the Israelites as an inheritance by lot, and you, my lord, were commanded by the LORD to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters. ³But if they become the wives of men from one of the other tribes of the Israelites, their inheritance will be taken away from the inheritance of our ancestors and added to the inheritance of the tribe they will then belong to. So it will be taken away from the share that fell to us by lot. ⁴And when the Jubilee of the Israelites arrives, their inheritance will be joined to the inheritance of the tribe they then belong to, and the inheritance of our ancestral tribe will lose it.” ⁵Then Moses gave the Israelites this command at the word of the LORD: “The tribe of Joseph’s descendants is right in what it says. ⁶This is what the LORD commands for the daughters of Zelophehad: ‘They are free to marry the man they prefer, as long as he is from a clan of their father’s tribe. ⁷An inheritance of the Israelites must not change hands from tribe to tribe, for each of the Israelites is to hold fast to the inheritance of their ancestral tribe. ⁸Any daughter who comes into an inheritance in one of the tribes of the Israelites is to become the wife of a man from a clan of her father’s tribe. In this way each of the Israelites will keep possession of their ancestors’ inheritance. ⁹An inheritance must not change hands from one tribe to another, for each tribe of the Israelites is to hold fast to its own inheritance.’” ¹⁰The daughters of Zelophehad did just as the LORD had commanded Moses. ¹¹Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, married the sons of their uncles. ¹²It was into clans descended from Manasseh son of Joseph that they married, so their inheritance stayed with the tribe of their father’s clan. ¹³These are the commandments and rulings that the LORD gave the Israelites through Moses on the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho.