Moses brought their case before the LORD. Numbers 27.5

God has designed that His Law should be read, studied, understood, and practiced within the framework of His Covenant community. No one has a right to “private interpretations” of the Law of God or any of His Word (2 Pet. 1.19-21). We can only expect to gain the benefit of God’s Law when we seek the Lord through the channels He has established.

The daughters of Zelophehad understood this. At the risk of being accused of reading more into this text than is justified, I want to suggest that more is actually involved here than what we read in Numbers 27.1-11. The daughters of Zelophehad were troubled by what they anticipated might happen once the people of Israel had subdued and settled the land of promise. That they believed this and were seeking to prepare for what they feared already tells us something about their faith.

We can imagine that these ladies discussed this situation among themselves and prayed about it frequently. Perhaps they talked with some other friends, who helped them to sort out their concerns and put their request into a proper form. We can imagine, these being people of genuine faith, that prayer and reviewing the traditions of God’s Covenant were very much part of these early stages.

It is unlikely that the presentation of this case to Moses was the ladies’ first appeal. God had set up for the nation a series of courts in which inquiries could be voiced, rulings could be tendered, and appeals could be made, if necessary (cf. Ex. 18). Moses was the “end of the line” for all such situations (Ex. 18.19, 22 – note how closely the language of Numbers 27.5 parallels this language). We as readers are brought into this situation at this point, but it is not reading too much into the story to believe that the scenario outlined above, in which faithful people sought the Lord, individually and together, informally and formally, was very much like the way the case must have unfolded.

So today, we can only expect to interpret the Law of God for justice when we seek the Lord through the proper channels He Himself has established. This means seeking Him in His Word, following the contextual demands outlined earlier (covenant, Law, Prophets, Jesus, Apostles). It also means considering the teaching and practice of the community of God’s people throughout the course of Church history and in contemporary practice. Finally, rightly interpreting the Law of God means that all this will be done within a local, contemporary context, in which those who are seeking justice and only justice seek the Lord together in order to understand His will according to the Biblical and communal/judicial contexts outlined above.

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