Numbers 36
1 Now the family heads of the clan of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh, one of the clans of Joseph, approached Moses and the leaders who were the heads of the Israelite families and addressed them, 2 saying, “ When the LORD commanded my lord to give the land as an inheritance to the Israelites by lot, He also commanded him to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters. 3 But if they marry any of the men from the other tribes of Israel, their inheritance will be withdrawn from the portion of our fathers and added to the tribe into which they marry. So our allotted inheritance would be taken away. 4 And when the Jubilee for the Israelites comes, their inheritance will be added to the tribe into which they marry and taken away from the tribe of our fathers.” 5 So at the word of the LORD, Moses commanded the Israelites: “ The tribe of the sons of Joseph speaks correctly. 6 This is what the LORD has commanded concerning the daughters of Zelophehad: They may marry anyone they please, provided they marry within a clan of the tribe of their father. 7 No inheritance in Israel may be transferred from tribe to tribe, because each of the Israelites is to retain the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers. 8 Every daughter who possesses an inheritance from any Israelite tribe must marry within a clan of the tribe of her father, so that every Israelite will possess the inheritance of his fathers. 9 No inheritance may be transferred from one tribe to another, for each tribe of Israel must retain its inheritance.” 10 So the daughters of Zelophehad did as the LORD had commanded Moses. 11 Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married to cousins on their father ’s side. 12 They married within the clans of the descendants of Manasseh son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained within the tribe of their father ’s clan. 13 These are the commandments and ordinances that the LORD gave the Israelites through Moses on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.
✦ What the text says
## Summary
Numbers 36 records the leaders of the clan of Gilead approaching Moses with a legal problem: if the daughters of Zelophehad (who inherited land in the absence of brothers, per Numbers 27) marry men from other tribes, their *nachalah* ("inheritance", H5159) would pass to their husbands' tribes, permanently reducing Manasseh's territory. Moses, acting "by the mouth of Yahweh," rules that such heiresses must marry within their father's tribe, and the chapter closes by noting the daughters' compliance.
## Key words
- *nachalah* ("inheritance", H5159) — feminine singular noun, repeated over a dozen times; it denotes the specific tribal land-portion, distinct from ownership in general.
- *tissov* ("it will go about", H5437) — qal imperfect, third-person feminine; describes the land itself as the grammatical subject "turning about" from tribe to tribe, framing the problem as movement of territory rather than of people.
- *yidbeku* ("they will hold/cling", H1692) — qal imperfect, third-person masculine plural; used of the Israelites "clinging" to their ancestral *nachalah*, expressing attachment rather than mere possession.
- *mishpachat* ("clan of", H4940) — feminine singular construct; marks the sub-unit within a tribe (*matteh*, H4294) to which the daughters must remain confined by marriage.
- *ben* ("son of", H1121A) — masculine singular construct, used repeatedly in the genealogical chain (Gilead ben Makir ben Manasseh) to trace lineage precisely.
## What the text says
The chapter opens with a chain of construct phrases (*ra'shei ha-avot*, "heads of the fathers," H7218/H0001) tracing the petitioners' lineage through Gilead, Makir, and Manasseh back to Joseph — a genealogical stacking typical of legal petitions establishing standing to speak. The core argument (vv. 3–4) uses two niphal imperfects, *nigre'ah* ("it will be withdrawn," H1639) and *nosaf* ("it will be added," H3254), both passive in form: the land itself is grammatically acted upon, never the women, which frames the concern as a structural problem of land movement rather than personal choice. The jubilee (*yovel*, H3104) is cited as the point at which any such transfer would become permanent, since normally the jubilee restored land to original holders. Moses' ruling (vv. 6–9) restates this passive-land vocabulary almost verbatim, confirming the tribal restriction with the phrase *lo tissov nachalah... mim
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.