Wednesday, Nov. 20
Numbers 27:1 – 28:15 Click here to read
As we have read through Numbers and the earlier lists of genealogies two things stand out: family ties define relationships and men carry the family identity.
In what we now call the western world this has been the case through recorded history, even the parts of our history that were pre-western, like the Bible itself.
This tradition has faded in the last couple of generations. In Great Britain, the preference for male heirs to the throne wasn’t changed by law until 2013. It remains in much of the world.
That seems archaic to us, which makes it easy to miss the remarkable elements of Chapter 27.
The chapter begins when five sisters approach Moses with a problem: they have no brothers, so there is no one to inherit their father’s estate and carry on the family line.
Moses takes the problem to God, who responds in their favor, “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and turn their father’s inheritance over to them.”
A second remarkable event happens when God names Joshua to succeed Moses as the leader of the people.
For much of his time as leader of the people, leadership seemed to be a family affair, with Aaron and Miriam, Moses’s brother and sister, at his side (despite failing him at times).
Aaron and Miriam have both died by this time, but we might have expected one of the sons of Moses, or at least of Aaron or Miriam, to take his place. (There is no mention in the Bible of Miriam having a husband or children, though Jewish tradition said she had a husband and one son).
But as Moses approaches his death, leadership passes outside the family to Joshua, who has served him as a loyal assistant, but has no apparent family relationship.
As we continue in the Old Testament it continues to be assumed that inheritance and leadership both follow male family lines, but there are enough exceptions that it would be hard to claim the tradition is God’s law.