Numbers 27:7-11

The daughters of Zelophehad speak right— God, approving their petition, passes their special case into a general law hereafter to be observed. These daughters of Zelophehad were to enjoy what would have fallen to their father's share had he been alive, because they stood in his place, and represented his person: and accordingly we find, that they had their portion in the land. Joshua 1:3. While, for the future, it is provided, that the inheritance should always pass to the next of kin, whether male or female, of the family of him who is deceased. This is ordained Numbers 27:11 to be a statute of judgment unto the children of Israel; i.e. a standing law whereby to judge of succession to inheritance in all future times. We may just observe, that the Hebrew text speaks here of the daughters in the masculine, which some interpreters think to be used because they are treated as if they were heirs male: but Hallet is rather of opinion, that there is a slight fault in the copyists, especially as the Samaritan Pentateuch expresses the same thing in the feminine. See Hallet's Study of the Scriptures, vol. 2: p. 16 and Selden de Success. cap. 12: Dr. Kennicott says, that where it is the father of them אביהם abihem, in the printed text, in the masculine, it is the father of them אביהן abihen, in the feminine, in no less than four MSS. in the Bodleian, and in another of Erfurt; see Dissert. p. 413. Lord Clarendon upon the 8th verse observes, "that the disinheriting of daughters is not only against divine right, but is of modern invention, and hath not antiquity to support it." According to the law of the twelve tribes, if any one died without children, brethren and sisters of the same father, the inheritance went to the next of kin. Ulpian. Instit. de Leg. Haered.