Faith in Action: The Daughters of Zelophehad
Restoring the Order of Creation
Faith Wonders Why?
In the ancient world, inheritance flowed through sons.
It wasn’t male dominance, it was survival.
Fortunes were made by few, in those days, and even then only across many generations.
Land stayed with the men so that the household could endure, generation to generation. It was practical, stable, and universally accepted across all cultures.
Every family was its own future.
Across every ancient culture, primogeniture, the right of the firstborn male, was law.
It preserved identity, lineage, and order. It kept the entire family fortune consolidated for the sake of future generations.
But then comes the silence of loss.
A man named Zelophehad dies, leaving five daughters and no sons.
No heir. No name to carry. No Inheritance in the Promised Land.
Their family would disappear before they even crossed the Jordan.
The system that worked for so many left them erased.
Surely it had happened before. But should it ever have to happen at all?
The daughters of Zelophehad could not imagine that the God who had rescued them from Egypt would now abandon them in the desert.
Something smelled unjust to them. So they brought it to God.
Faith Speaks Up
The daughters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, step forward.
Their names are recorded forever, a small miracle of dignity in an age where women’s names were rarely written.
But what they do next is either courage or madness. Only in time will God tell.
They come to the Tent of Meeting... they come before Moses… before the priest… before the elders… before all the congregation.
It would have been courageous enough to have gotten a private audience with Moses.
But these brave women would make their petition in public. Astonishing.
“Why should our father’s name be taken away from his clan, because he had no son?”
Death is bad enough. A man dies because that is the wage of sin.
The daughters of Zelophehad were aware of that. But why should one death claim multiple victims? Surely God is faithful and just.
They are asking for righteousness.
They bring their case through the one appointed to intercede, Moses, trusting that God’s Word will make sense of what their world cannot.
Faith Awaits an Answer
Then comes God’s reply:
“The daughters of Zelophehad are right.”
But hopefully you, like I, expect God to be more eloquent than that. Fortunately, He was.
When he called those women “right”, he used the very same word he had used 6 times during the creation of the world in Genesis 1, “and it was so.”
And just like that we see that primogeniture was a human construction, not God’s design.
God’s answer to Moses was not a new law, but a revelation of what has always been true.
In that divine sentence, creation itself is remembered rightly again.
Zelophehad’s daughters should not suffer unjustly in God’s Kingdom.
But more than that, both man and woman bear His image. Both stand accountable and beloved before Him.
Both are heirs of the promise.
If Israel were to be a people of God’s making, they would have to work toward a social structure which preserved life and created opportunity for all the living.
Faith Restores
When God calls His people to action, it is for the sake of restorative justice.
Yes, the daughters of Zelophehad were quite personally involved in the case. That’s how God called them into action.
Perhaps you haven’t felt God’s call to action lately. Could it be because you haven’t gotten personally enough involved?
Meet enough people and God will soon call you to action. That’s practically a Biblical promise.
In the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, Israel’s understanding of inheritance was drawn closer to the heart of God.
What do you see going on around you that smells unjust?
I see hard working families struggling to make ends meet. There are all kinds of reasons why…
But the injustice of it, when measured against the order of creation, is unmistakable.
Action.
First, bringing our petitions to our Mediator.
We pray them amid the congregation of God’s people, and we wait.
And when the Lord speaks, we act.
Faith in action is participation in God’s ongoing act of creation… His putting the world back together again, piece by piece, by His People and through His Word.
Faith Acts
Get involved in your church’s mission.
Your church is the main mechanism God uses to restore His Image in you and in all the living.
He does this by saving you. He does this by imputing His righteousness on you.
He does this by enlightening you with His own Spirit, which is exactly how He calls you to action.
So get involved. He’ll restore you. And through you God just might restore an entire community.
