Numbers 27:4 - Exposition

Give unto us … a possession among the brethren of our father. The daughters of Zelophehad did not ask for any share of what had been their father's, but they asked that the lands which would have been assigned to their father in the settlement of Canaan might still be assigned to them, so that their father's name might attach to those lands, and be handed down with them. The request assumes that the "brethren" of Zelophehad would receive an inheritance in the promised land, either personally or as represented by their sons; hence it seems clear that Zelophehad was not of the elder generation, which had forfeited all their rights and expectations in Canaan, but of the younger, to whom the inheritance was transferred ( Numbers 14:29-32 ). This is confirmed by the consideration that these women were not married until some time after this ( Numbers 36:11 ; cf. Joshua 17:8 , Joshua 17:4 ), and must, therefore, according to the almost invariable custom, have been quite young at this time. It is reasonable to suppose that the heads of separate families to whom the land was distributed would be at this time men of from forty-five to sixty years of age, comprising the elder half of the generation which grew up in the wilderness. Zelophehad would have been among these, but that he was cut off, perhaps in the plague of serpents, or in the plague of the Arboth Mesh, and left only unmarried girls to represent him.