The Law Is A Starting Place
Policy, Petition, and the Daughters of Zelophehad in Parashat Pinchas
This week, as we continue our march through The Book of Numbers, we read Parashat Pinchas. The Israelites are fast approaching the Promised Land and are getting ready to enter and settle down. To prepare, God tells Moses take a census of all the people (men, old enough to bear arms) and to then divide up the Promised Land into plots for each ancestral tribe (and thus family). Suddenly, five women, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah have something to say:
Numbers 27:1-9
The daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh son of Joseph –the names of his daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah–stood before Moses, Eleazar the kohen and the princes of the entire assembly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and said, “Our father died in the wilderness. But he was not one of the followers banding together against God with Korah, though he died for his own sin. But he had no sons. Why should our father’s name diminish from his family just because he had no son? Give to us property among our father’s brothers.”
So Moses brought their issue before God, and God spoke to Moses saying, “The daughters of Zelophehad are right in saying you should give them property by inheritance among their father’s relatives. You are to turn over the inheritance of their father to them.”
“Furthermore, you are to speak to the Israelites saying: If a man dies without a son, you are to transfer his inheritance to his daughter.”
These women petitioned to change public policy, the petition went from the local court (Moses and Eleazar) to the high court (God), and they won their case. Significantly, they don’t just receive a one time exception to the inheritance laws, their victory forever changes the policy for all daughters (without brothers) to come. Pretty badass if you ask me.
Now, did they go all-the-way-radical and say that all children of a landowner (regardless of gender) should inherit the land equally no matter what? No. They say,
their father died “but he had no sons.” And Rashi says this is what makes these women smart (and we can assume Rashi means this is also what makes their petition reasonable).1 Still, I’m inclined to wholeheartedly applaud these sisters as great feminist models for collective action.
However, while I don’t want to gloss over the fact that it is women who make this change in the law, I am compelled in this moment to dive into what this case can teach us about the nature of the laws in Torah more broadly.
When we think about the Torah being interpreted and laws being applied to everyday life, we often think about people reading and petitioning the Torah from the outside. Meaning, the Rabbis or someone today might sit down with The Book and say, “Hey that law isn’t just.” What is remarkable about this story is that the petition comes from inside of the text. It’s kept in there. Why record the story of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah at all when the Torah could just say something like, “And also, if there are no sons but only daughters, the land goes to the daughters”?
The Torah is showing us that God’s word, even as it was being given via Moses to the people, is open to protest. Not 100 years later when “times have changed,” but in real time, God’s policy doesn’t work for some people, and it can be updated or amended immediately, as we see in this case.
Furthermore, God says that their protest is just. Meaning, the inheritance policy was incomplete – or worse, unjust – as originally given. For the sake of justice, it was necessary for Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah to speak up.
Rashi raises another excellent point when he says, “This tells us that [the eyes of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah] saw what Moses’ eye did not see. (They had a finer perception of what was just in the law of inheritance than Moses had.)” (cf. Midrash Tanchuma, Pinchas 8) via sefaria.com. Moses, the person closest to the source of the law, was not the person to see the injustice that he, himself, was handing out. It took someone who was actually experiencing the law to point out the injustice. In other words, the law is not complete in the abstract but has to be actually enacted for it to be totally assessed. It makes you wonder if any new law should be rolled out with a sort of probationary status before it is fully codified.
So where does this leave us? How can this story help us understand the nature of Torah?
For me, this story implies that the Torah itself knows that the law is just a starting place. The law needs the people to apply it, challenge it, and change it to keep justice alive.
“Thus it follows that if he had had a son they would have made no claim of any kind: this tells us that they were women of intelligence” (Sifrei Bamidbar 133:4; cf. Bava Batra 119b) via sefaria.com