Numbers 36

¹ Then the heads of families in the clan of the sons of Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh, one of the clans of Joseph’s sons, came forward.

² They spoke before Moses and the leaders, the heads of families of Israel’s sons, and said: ‘Yahweh has ordered my lord to give the land to the sons of Israel, sharing it out by lot; and my lord has been ordered by Yahweh to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters.

³ Now, if they marry someone from another tribe in the sons of Israel, their property will be taken away from the inheritance of our fathers. The property of the tribe to which they will belong will be increased, and the property allotted to us diminished.

⁴ And when the jubilee comes round for the sons of Israel, the property of these women will be added to the inheritance of the tribe to which they then belong, and lost to the inheritance of our own patriarchal tribe.’

⁵ Moses, at Yahweh’s bidding, gave the following ruling to the sons of Israel. He said: ‘The tribe of the sons of Joseph is in the right.

⁶ This is Yahweh’s ruling for the daughters of Zelophehad: “They may marry whom they please, providing they marry into a clan of their father’s tribe.

⁷ The heritage of the sons of Israel is not to be transferred from tribe to tribe; every man of the sons of Israel is to remain bound to the heritage of his patriarchal tribe.

⁸ Every daughter who has a heritage in one of the tribes of the sons of Israel must marry into a clan of her own paternal tribe, so that the sons of Israel may each preserve the heritage of his father.

⁹ No heritage may be transferred from one tribe to another: every tribe of the sons of Israel will stay bound to its own heritage.”‘

¹⁰ The daughters of Zelophehad did as Yahweh had ordered Moses.

¹¹ Mahlah, Tirzah, Hogiah, Milcah and Noah, daughters of Zelophehad, married the sons of their father’s brothers.

¹² Since they married into the clans of the sons of Manasseh son of Joseph, their heritage reverted to the tribe of their father’s clan.

¹³ These are the commandments and laws that Yahweh laid down for the sons of Israel through Moses in the plains of Moab near the Jordan opposite Jericho.