Numbers
Chapter 36
1 The leaders of the clans in Gilead’s family, who was Machir’s son and Manasseh’s grandson, both descendants of Joseph, approached and spoke to Moses and the heads of Israel’s families.
2 They said, God told my lord to divide the land among the Israelites by casting lots, and my lord was told by God to give our brother Zelophehad’s daughters their inheritance.
3 If they marry men from other Israelite tribes, their property will be moved from our ancestors’ tribe to their husbands’ tribe, reducing our inherited land.
4 When Israel’s jubilee comes, their land will join the land of the tribe they have joined, and it will no longer be part of our ancestors’ tribal land.
5 Moses told the Israelites what God had said, and he agreed that the tribe of Joseph’s sons had spoken wisely.
6 God commands this about Zelophehad’s daughters: They should marry whoever they want, but they must marry within their father’s tribal family.
7 The lands of Israel’s tribes must not be passed from one tribe to another; each person from the tribes of Israel must hold on to the land inherited from their ancestors.
8 Every daughter who has property in an Israelite tribe must marry someone from her father’s tribe, so each Israelite man can keep his family inheritance.
9 An inheritance must not pass from one tribe to another; each tribe of the children of Israel must hold on to its own inheritance.
10 Just as God told Moses, the daughters of Zelophehad did the same.
11 Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, daughters of Zelophehad, married their cousins on their father’s side.
12 They married into the families of Manasseh’s sons, Joseph’s son, and their property stayed in their father’s family tribe.
13 These are the commands and rules that God gave through Moses to the people of Israel in the Moab plains by the Jordan River near Jericho.