📖 Biblical Definition
Zelophehad’s daughters — Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah — were five sisters whose father died in the wilderness without sons (Numbers 27:1-11). They came to Moses and the assembly at the door of the tabernacle requesting a place in Israel’s tribal inheritance: "Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father." Moses took the case before the LORD; the LORD ruled in their favor and established the principle as law for all Israel: where a man dies leaving daughters but no sons, his inheritance passes to his daughters. A later ruling (Numbers 36) added that they must marry within their father’s tribe to keep the inheritance in the tribe — which they did. Female inheritance under patriarchal order.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
The five daughters of Zelophehad, of the tribe of Manasseh, whose petition (Numbers 27, 36) established the right of daughters to inherit when no sons survived.
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Numbers 27:1-11 tells the original case; Numbers 36 deals with the corollary problem of inheritance leaving the tribe through marriage. The case becomes a permanent statute in Israel.
Joshua 17:3-4 records that the five sisters did, in fact, receive their portion in the conquest. Their names are remembered together, in order, in three separate biblical texts.
📖 Key Scripture
Numbers 27:4 — "Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father."
Numbers 27:7 — "The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father's brethren."
Numbers 36:6 — "Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry."
Joshua 17:4 — "And they came near before Eleazar the priest... saying, The LORD commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Critics paint Old Testament inheritance law as flatly oppressive to women; Numbers 27 itself shows the LORD ratifying a women's petition by name, against existing custom.
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Five sisters approach the leadership of Israel to argue that the law as written would erase their father's name. They are not punished or dismissed. The LORD says, by name, they speak right, and changes the inheritance law of Israel.
Read carefully, Numbers 27 is a Torah text in which women initiate, the LORD listens, the law adjusts. The flattening of Old Testament gender ethics into a one-line caricature collapses on this single chapter alone.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Their father's name carries possible echoes of trouble; their own names are preserved in three Torah and Joshua passages.
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H6765 — צְלָפְחָד (Tzelaphchad) — Zelophehad; possibly ‘shadow of fear’.
Note: the names of the daughters — Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah — are listed in fixed order in Num 26:33, 27:1, 36:11, and Josh 17:3.
Usage
"The daughters of Zelophehad changed Israel's inheritance law by asking."
"When the LORD says they speak right, the law adjusts."
"Numbers 27 is one of the great answered-petition stories in Torah."