This chapter gives an account of an application made by the heads of the tribe of Manasseh, concerning the inheritances of the daughters of Zelophehad, which, should they marry into other tribes, would be removed thither, and so be a loss to theirs, Num.

And the chief fathers of the families of the children of Gilead The princes, as Aben Ezra; so the Septuagint version, which was the tribe of Manasseh, whose grandson Gilead was, as follows: the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh of the families of the sons of Joseph, came near; to the house of…

And they said One in the name of the rest: the Lord commanded my lord; that is, Moses, whom they address in a very respectable manner, being the chief governor of the nation under God: to give the land for an inheritance by lot to the children of Israel; which command may be seen, in : and my lord…

And if they be married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the children of Israel Which was not an unreasonable supposition, and perhaps was judged very probable and likely, if some method was not taken to prevent it; which they might conclude from the application of some young men of the…

And when the jubilee of the children of Israel shall be At which time inheritances were to be restored to the original proprietors of them; yet this would be of no service in the present case, but rather the contrary, since it would fix the inheritances of these daughters in another tribe or in…

And Moses commanded the children of Israel Even all the tribes of Israel, whom the following law concerned, as well as the tribe of Manasseh: according to the word of the Lord; whom no doubt he consulted on this occasion, as he did when the daughters of Zelophehad applied unto him about the…

This is the thing which the Lord doth command concerning the daughters of Zelophehad Concerning this affair relative to them; the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases the words, “not for the generations that rise up after the division of the land, but for the daughters of Zelophehad;” as if this order…

So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe Which shows that this concerns all the tribes of Israel, though yet not fully expressed, as it is afterwards: for everyone of the children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers;…

And every daughter that possesseth an inheritance in any tribe if the children of Israel For the same law which gave the daughters of Zelophehad right to their father’s inheritance, gave every other daughter in Israel a right to inherit where there were no sons, and every such daughter, according…

Neither shall the inheritance remove from one tribe to another, &c.] Which was one end of the year of jubilee, but that did not sufficiently secure it without this law, as this case shows: but everyone of the tribes of Israel shall keep himself to his own inheritance; the chief view of which was,…

Even as the Lord commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad. ] They married into, the family of their father’s tribe, according to the following account.

For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah The names of the daughters of Zelophehad, and the same as in , only the order a little varied, Tirzah and Noah here changing places; there they are according to their birth, here they are according to their marriage, as Aben Ezra thinks; though…

And they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh, the son of Joseph The family of the Hepherites, of which they were. Aben Ezra observes, that their being married into families, and not a family, is a sign that their uncles’ sons were not all of them brethren, or the sons of one man,…

These are the commandments and the judgments The judicial laws concerning the division of the land of Canaan, the case of inheritances in it, and the cities of refuge: which the Lord commanded by, the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel, in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho; where the…