Numbers 36

1The heads of the ancestral houses of the clan of the descendants of Gilead son of Machir, son of Manasseh, one of the clans of the descendants of Joseph, came forward and spoke before Moses and the leaders, the heads of the ancestral houses of the Israelites.

2They said, “Yahweh commanded my lord to give the land by lot to the Israelites as an inheritance, and my lord was commanded by Yahweh to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters.

3But if they marry men from any of the other tribes of the Israelites, their inheritance will be taken away from the inheritance of our fathers and added to the inheritance of the tribe into which they marry. So it will be taken away from the inheritance allotted to us.

4When the Jubilee comes for the Israelites, their inheritance will be added to the inheritance of the tribe into which they marry, and their inheritance will be taken away from the inheritance of our ancestral tribe.”

5Then at Yahweh’s command Moses gave this order to the Israelites: “What the tribe of the descendants of Joseph is saying is right.

6This is what Yahweh has commanded concerning the daughters of Zelophehad: They may marry anyone they please, but only within a clan of their father’s tribe.

7No inheritance of the Israelites is to pass from tribe to tribe, for each of the Israelites is to hold on to the inheritance of his ancestral tribe.

8Every daughter who inherits property in any tribe of the Israelites must marry a man from a clan of her father’s tribe, so that every Israelite may possess the inheritance of his fathers.

9No inheritance is to pass from one tribe to another, for each tribe of the Israelites is to hold on to its own inheritance.”

10The daughters of Zelophehad did as Yahweh had commanded Moses.

11Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, married the sons of their father’s brothers.

12They married into the clans of the descendants of Manasseh son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of their father’s clan.

13These are the commands and the rulings that Yahweh gave the Israelites through Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.