🔢WEB · Numbers 27:3
What does Numbers 27:3 mean?
"“Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against Yahweh in the company of Korah, but he died in his own sin. He had no sons."
— Numbers 27:3 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Then the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph came near. These are the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah.
They stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, at the door of the Tent of Meeting, saying,
“Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against Yahweh in the company of Korah, but he died in his own sin. He had no sons.
Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family, because he had no son? Give to us a possession among the brothers of our father.”
Moses brought their cause before Yahweh.
Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
Explanation
Numbers 27:3 records the words of the five daughters of Zelophehad—Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah—as they bring a legal case before Moses, Eleazar the priest, and the leaders of Israel. In plain language, they are explaining that their father died during the wilderness wanderings, but he was not one of the rebels who joined Korah's uprising against Moses and Aaron (an event recorded in Numbers 16, where Korah and his followers were destroyed for challenging Yahweh's appointed leadership). Rather, Zelophehad died simply because of the common sentence of death that fell on that entire generation—the adults who, due to unbelief at Kadesh Barnea, were condemned to die in the wilderness rather than enter the Promised Land (Numbers 14). The daughters emphasize this point because they are about to make a request: since their father left no sons, they are asking that his inheritance in the land not be lost, but instead pass to them.
The historical context is essential to understanding the verse. Moses wrote this account during Israel's forty years of wandering, as the nation prepared to enter Canaan under Joshua after that first unbelieving generation had died off. The daughters' claim needed careful qualification because inheritance rights and land allotments in Israel were connected to covenant standing before God. If their father had died as a rebel against Yahweh's authority (like Korah), his
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