“I was just thinking,” said Mahlah, meditatively.
Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah all looked at each other, raising their eyebrows and shaking their heads slightly. “Oh no!” they chorused in unison.
It looked almost like a practised routine as their gazes returned to the original speaker.
Over the years, the sisters had had frequent experience with Mahlah’s thoughts. They normally led to trouble or inconvenience for everyone.
Even back when Mother and Father were still alive, Mahlah’s “I was just thinking” statements had been somewhat of a family tradition.
Five daughters had been God’s blessings for Zelophehad, and he would not have been without any one of them. However, he would have appreciated a son to round out the family – but it was not to be.
Mahlah was the second of his crop of daughters, and a thoughtful lass she was. Those words fell naturally from her lips, always accompanied by a pensive, reflective, contemplative expression, and a gaze that seemed to stare through her audience as if they weren’t there.
Mother had tried to discourage Mahlah from thinking too much. Girls, so mother said, should leave excessive amounts of thinking until after they were married. There was time enough for thoughts once a husband had been safely procured. The knitted brows of a pensive look detracted from a girl’s beauty, she said – and, anyway (although at only seven years of age Mahlah didn’t need to worry about it quite yet) she would find that men didn’t like women who thought too much.
Mahlah tried to oblige Mother, but she simply couldn’t help herself. Juggling ideas and thoughts, examining the possibilities and opportunities of life – these things were as natural to her as was barking to a dog or flight to a dove. And she always seemed to foresee the tricky, complicated situations that nobody else had imagined.
If Mother had lived to see how Mahlah’s persistent thinking was to make her daughters famous, she might well have died of embarrassment!
There were many other families among the Israelites that had daughters but no sons. But none of the other families had Mahlah, so it was Zelophehad’s daughters who became the classic case study for exceptions in inheritance law for the whole nation.
Yet, even so, it is unlikely that Mahlah’s incessant thinking would have brought them quite so much fame without Noah, the oldest daughter. It was Noah whose determination forced the world to acknowledge her sister’s thoughts, and her father’s heritage. She had been named after the greatest boat-builder the world had ever known, a man whose righteousness and determination are universally admired – so much so that few use the name for their sons lest they be overwhelmed by the load of
expectation that goes with the name. Zelophehad, however, had not been afraid of that load and had even been willing to apply the name to a girl-child. Of course, he expected to have a son later as well, but, nevertheless, he had high hopes for this, his first daughter.
But the question always in the background was whether he would see her grow to adulthood.
It was a strange time in the history of the nation – in fact, in the history of the world. Every adult in the nation was facing a deadline and they knew it, and many were dying even earlier in sudden plagues.
Years earlier, everyone in the twelve tribes of Israel who was 20 years old or over had been condemned to die in the wilderness after they had refused to obey God’s command to enter the Promised Land and conquer it. Zelophehad had been a young man then, just 22 years old,[1] and he had listened with the rest to the brave heroes who had spied out the land over 40 days and brought back such a terrifying report. It wasn’t that the land wasn’t wonderful in many ways, they admitted – it
was just that its idyllic characteristics had spawned the biggest and strongest defenders that could be imagined. In fact, the giant warriors reported by the spies were even bigger than could be properly imagined – big enough to terrify both the witnesses and their hearers.
It was true that two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, while acknowledging the apparent difficulties, had claimed that Israel would have no trouble taking over the land with God’s help. But that had sounded fanciful, and young Zelophehad had been no more convinced than anyone else.
Within hours, all of the spies had died from a plague – except for Joshua and Caleb.[2] Moses’ urgent prayer to God had saved the rest of the nation from immediate and utter destruction,[3] but God had announced that none of those then over twenty would ever enter the Promised Land.[4] Instead, their children would enter the land,[5] there to be shown how easy it is to overcome giants when God is on your side.
As a result, the entire nation had been forced to turn back and wander the inhospitable wilderness for another 38 hopeless years.[6] After 15 of these years, Zelophehad had married Mother,[7] and the next year, their first daughter Noah had been born, followed by her sisters Mahlah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, one every two years, like clockwork.[8]
Soon after the birth of the youngest girl, Tirzah, Zelophehad’s wife died. It was tragic, really, but she was merely one of thousands of people dying at an early age throughout the nation, their bodies being hastily buried in scattered graves – graves that would never be revisited by grieving relatives once the nation had moved on to another campsite. Families were experiencing first-hand the cost of rejecting God’s love and disobeying his commands.
Noah was almost nine years old when Mother died, and it was she who took over as the mother of the family, determined to give each of her sisters a family life they could be proud of. She took to mothering as a lamb takes to eating grass – with enthusiasm and long-term devotion.
When Noah was nineteen years old, her father Zelophehad also died, and then she became a fill-in father as well. Once again, she took on the job with whole-hearted devotion, the thought of marrying never entering her head. Her sisters still needed her: how else could they be cared for and prepared for marriage themselves?
It was as the 38 extra years of wandering in the wilderness were drawing to an end that Mahlah made the observation with which we started this story.
“I was just thinking,” she said, and her sisters looked at each other.
“Oh, no!” they all answered.
As usual, Mahlah ignored this discouraging response and said, “We are all descendants of Jacob: a man. Our family is from the tribe of Manasseh: a man. Our father was from the Hepherites, and Hepher was the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh. All of the people in the list are men. The inheritance goes through sons; men. But Father had no sons. Does that mean his name will just drop out of the family? Disappear completely?”
The sisters looked at each other again, this time thoughtfully. Why hadn’t that question occurred to anyone else? None of them wanted their father’s name to disappear from the genealogical records. Father had not been perfect – and would have been horrified if anyone had suggested that he was – but he had been a pretty good Dad, and had never made them feel unimportant or unwanted because they were only girls and could not continue his name in the family.
Noah felt a little shocked. She had known their father better than any of the younger girls and knew that he had never complained about his “gaggle of girls”, as he called them. Yet she also knew that family inheritance and lineage were important to him. He was proud to be a descendant of Joseph, the most famous of Jacob’s sons. It had never occurred to Noah that he might be disappointed with their gender or with the plethora of girls God had given him. In thinking
back over the days near the end of his life, though, she began to wonder if Mahlah’s insight might explain some of the comments he had made. He had been accepting of what life had given him, but had still seemed a little disappointed in ways that Noah had not understood at the time.
Mahlah’s thoughts came at a time when the people of Israel were beginning to look forward to finally being able to enter the Promised Land. Imagine it! Settling down to live in one place on land that would stay in the family for generations. Most of the nation had been born in the wilderness, born in tents, born to keep moving whenever and wherever the cloud of God led them. For this generation, that was life as normal – but it still inspired a longing to settle and build
a family while living on the land.
But everyone knew that inheritance went through the men of the family. It was sad, but Zelophehad had missed out badly when he had all daughters and no sons.
At that moment, Noah and her sisters decided that they were not willing to allow that to happen without a fight. Father deserved that they at least make an effort to ensure that he didn’t slip from the memory of the nation, the tribe or the clan.
They started the official wheels turning, and within days, the echoes of their question had reverberated even in the ears of Moses. A time was set for this extraordinary question to be considered by Moses, Eleazar the priest and the leaders of the congregation. It was to be an open hearing: anyone could be present to listen, and many took an interest in this strange situation.
The girls were called and given the opportunity to explain their problem, which they did simply and clearly.
Moses quickly understood the problem and could have given them the widely accepted answer: inheritance goes exclusively through sons, never through daughters. Yet he was uncomfortable with this because it condemned men like Zelophehad – blessed only with daughters – to exclusion from the tribal genealogies and inheritance. So he asked God for a judgement, and God’s answer was clear and simple, although few expected it.
Once the nation was established in the land and the land was being assigned to individuals within their tribal areas, Noah and her sisters were to inherit the land their father would have received.
It was a fascinating conclusion, and those who liked to study God’s character as it shone through his laws, happily added this extra fact to their understanding of Yahweh. Extra judgements were also provided for the case where men died, not only without sons, but without any children at all. Simplified, it all meant that the land must stay within a tribe, to be inherited by the closest available male relative.
The question had been answered and the tricky situation nicely straightened out. Zelophehad’s daughters were known throughout the nation. Through their efforts, he was famous.
But more was yet to come.
Some time later, the girls were sitting and chatting together, Hoglah a little distractedly because her thoughts were occupied by a young man from the camp of Ephraim who had been paying her particular attentions recently.
“I was just thinking,” began Mahlah, and this time the other girls contented themselves with looking at each other. Since the episode of the inheritance, the others had treated Mahlah’s thoughts with a little more respect. After all, each of them was an heiress now, largely because of Mahlah’s unusual thoughts.
“Since the judgement about our inheritance, we’ve all been a little more popular with the men than we were before. And Hoglah’s latest conquest got me thinking, because he is not from the same tribe as we are. He is from Ephraim, not Manasseh. Now it seems to me that if Hoglah were to marry this young man, our father’s place in Manasseh would be lost again, and the land she is to inherit would become a little island of Ephraim inside Manasseh. Now I have nothing against
the tribe of Ephraim – as descendants of Joseph, they are our closest relatives, I suppose. But Manasseh’s land should belong to his descendants.”
There wasn’t much need for discussion. Everyone agreed: Mahlah’s thinking seemed to have uncovered a major problem.
Once again, it was Noah who pursued the matter, and within a short time, the leaders of their clan had taken up the question and arranged a hearing before Moses and the other leaders. This likewise was to be an open hearing, and many came to listen, intrigued by the story of these five girls.
The leaders of Manasseh explained the situation created by the special case of Zelophehad and his daughters. Everyone now knew that the girls were to inherit land when Canaan was conquered, but if they married men from other tribes, their land would be transferred to the other tribe and Manasseh would lose some of its inheritance.
Once more, these girls – and others like them in other tribes – would require special rules. Any girls who inherited land would, alone of all the girls in Israel, have to marry within their own tribe, so that the land they inherited would stay within their tribe.
The young man from Ephraim was disappointed, but, one by one, the girls found husbands among their cousins. One cousin was even courageous enough to marry Mahlah, braving her “I was just thinking” moments. Their first child was a daughter, which really got her thinking….
At last it was Noah’s turn. The oldest, the one who had felt responsible for her sisters and had waited for all of them to be married, was finally free to be married herself.
