Week 9 Numbers 35-Deuteronomy 13
Numbers 33-36 is a mixed bag of topics (and not a bad way to end the book).
First there’s a Forty-Year Travel Review, a listing of all the places Israel had camped – from the first stop fleeing Egypt, across time and distance to prairie country in Moab, just over the river from Jericho.
They had discussions there about subdividing the land, and chapter 34 ends with a list of twelve leaders who’ll do that job.
The Levites were the odd-men-out as far as land was concerned – their tribe got no land at all. They had to be content with being privileged guardians of the Hebrew religion (and they didn’t go away totally empty-handed – they got forty-eight cities).
The book ends with a polite dispute about inheritances. A man named Zelophehad had five daughters – Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. And he had no sons. The rule was: an inheritance goes to the son. Back in chapter 27 the brother-less sisters had already asked Moses to modify the rule and let them have the inheritance. Moses agreed and the rule was changed. Now, at the end of the book the Zelophehad girls come back with another practical question: who gets our inheritance if we marry a guy from a different tribe? In that case, a new ruling was made that a girl with an inheritance had to marry within the tribe. Maybe not an ideal compromise for a girl. But maybe flexible and fair enough to not be the worst.