Then drew near the daughters of Zelophehad the son of Hepher, son of Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh, from the clans of Manasseh the son of Joseph. The names of his daughters were: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. And they stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest and before the chiefs and all the congregation, at the entrance 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 the LORD in the company of Korah, but died for his own sin. And he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from his clan because he had no son? Give to us a possession among our father’s brothers.” Numbers 27.1-4

The daughters of Zelophehad discerned what they considered to be a lacuna in the Law of God that could have left them susceptible to losing what they regarded as their eighth-commandment right to inherit their father’s allotment of the land of promise. Their father had no son, but he was a faithful man. It did not seem right to them that his name should be forgotten in Israel or that they should forfeit their inheritance.

But these godly women also understood something else about the Law of God. The Law of God is based on, grounded in, and seeks to enable the realization of the promises God made to His people in His Covenant. In the covenantal period, before Israel was a distinct nation, and while she lived precariously among her pagan neighbors, God seems to have left certain aspects of His Covenant in a state of cultural adaptation. For example, whereas under the Law of God there was to be one place where sacrifices would be made, and one caste of leaders to offer them, during the early stages of God’s Covenant sacrifices could be offered by heads of households at various altars. This reflected pagan practice and would have had the practical effect of not making the people of God “stick out” among their pagan neighbors, in whose lands they dwelled.

So also, pagan inheritance laws passed property down to sons, and in the patriarchal days of God’s Covenant, this was the practice as well.

But the daughters of Zelophehad doubtless also understood two additional things about God’s Covenant. First, it was made with men and women who became one flesh as the image-bearers of God (Gen. 1.26-28; 2.24), and second, that the Law came in order to allow the people God had redeemed as His own nation to realize more fully the promises made to their forebears (Ex. 2.23-25). They seemed to have understood that the Law intended to “open up” God’s Covenant for fuller realization. What they were requesting would have been consistent with God’s original intent, as well as with His expanding purpose for Israel now that she was becoming a nation of her own in her own land.

Both Jesus and Paul acknowledged that the Law was added to the early covenantal protocols and promises, not to nullify those protocols and promises, but to make it possible for God’s people to realize more completely His original intention for them (Matt. 19.3-12; Gal. 3.15-18). Nothing in the Law of God is contrary to the promises of His Covenant. Thus, if we hope to be able rightly to interpret and justly to apply the Law of God, we must read and study and use it within the framework of God’s Covenant, as that is initiated and developed throughout the book of Genesis.

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