Day 48. Numbers 27-30

Our reading for today presents us with a wonderful story of the empowerment of women and an insight into the formation of Torah law in Israel. That law is not immutable—it can be influenced by a demand for fairness, as we see in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad.
They come to the entrance of the tent of meeting and present themselves before the assembly with a plea for justice. Their father is dead; the women themselves are unmarried, and they have no brothers. They find themselves non-persons—dispossessed by their situation--unable to claim the acreage in the Promised Land which would have come to their father by right. They come to Moses and the leaders of the people demanding "a possession [of land] among our father's brothers" (27:4).
We have noted that there were powerful and respected women in Israel, and sometimes, like Miriam, they made a bid to share in decision-making process. But most of the time women are pushed into the background. It took great courage for the daughters of Zelophehad to make such an audacious demand of a society dominated by men. But this story demonstrates that in Israel women had the right to appeal unjust laws, and they could expect that their case would be taken seriously and carried to the highest court.
So in 27:5 Moses takes their plea directly to the LORD. And the LORD, who is both just and merciful, says—"The daughters of Zelophehad are right. . . . . You shall indeed let them possess an inheritance" (27:7). The law is changed and these single women are given an allotment of the Promised Land. So God effectively changes the inheritance laws of the Torah to incorporate their rights as part of the people of the promise. It is indeed a powerful story.
The place of women within the People of the Promise is a complex one. As we read through the Old Testament, we will see that again and again women have to struggle for justice within the system where the cards are stacked against them. They have to rely on their own cleverness, boldness, and sexuality assets to prevail. And they do prevail—against great odds. The Bible is a collection of stories about freedom, national and personal.
Yet in the Old Testament the balance is always weighted on the side of authority over freedom, the rights of the community over the rights of the individual. So in the laws regarding vows made by women in Numbers, chapter 30, we find that women have the right to make Nazirite vows (remember these from Chapter 6) only if their husbands or fathers do not immediately protest. A male veto cancels any vow a woman may make on her own and will effectively block her spiritual aspirations. When it comes to such vows, if "her husband has nullified them," his word goes. And if a woman is forced to break her own vows "the LORD will forgive her" (30:12). But the LORD stands with the authority of the husband in these cases.
Custom and prejudice are powerful barriers to the freedom of women in both Old and New Testaments. Often the rights of women in the Bible are not considered until they force the issue, as the daughters of Zelophehad do in our reading. The Christian Gospels are filled with stories of "uppity" women who overcome all sorts of prejudice to receive their fair share of the freedom the gospel promises. The struggle for freedom is a theme to which we will return again and again as we continue our reading together.