A family's land may belong to women

36 The leaders of the families in Gilead's clan went to Moses and to the other leaders of the Israelites' clans. (Gilead was the descendant of Makir, who was the descendant of Manasseh. Manasseh was Joseph's son.) ^2 [a] They said, ‘The Lord told you, sir, that you should decide which parts of the land to give to each Israelite family. You used special stones to do that. The Lord told you to give Zelophehad's land to his daughters. Zelophehad was in our clan. ³ But if his daughters marry, the land will then belong to their husbands. If they marry men from other tribes, the land will no longer belong to us, the tribe of Manasseh. ⁴ Even when the Jubilee year comes, the land will not return to our tribe. It will belong to the tribes of the men that Zelophehad's daughters have married.’

⁵ The Lord gave Moses his answer. So Moses gave this command to the Israelites: ‘What Joseph's descendants are saying is right. ⁶ This is what the Lord has commanded about the daughters of Zelophehad: Let them marry men that they want to marry. But they must marry men from the clans of their father's tribe. ⁷ If they do that, each tribe will keep the land that has been given to their ancestors. None of their land will go to another tribe. ⁸ Any young woman who receives land when her father dies must marry a man from her father's tribe. All the Israelite tribes must obey that rule. Then every Israelite person will keep the land that belonged to his ancestors. ⁹ No land that belongs to any tribe will become the land of another tribe. So each tribe will keep the land that their ancestors had.’

¹⁰ The daughters of Zelophehad did what the Lord had commanded Moses. ¹¹ Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, married sons of their father's brothers. ¹² They married men from the clans of the descendants of Joseph's son, Manasseh. Because of that, their land remained with the tribe of their father's clan.

¹³ Those are the rules that the Lord gave to the Israelites at that time. The Lord told Moses what he should say to the people. That happened when they were beside the Jordan River in Moab, on the flat ground on the other side of the river from Jericho city.