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Numbers 36

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1 Now the heads of the families of the children of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of the sons of Joseph, came to Moses, the chiefs and the heads of families of the children of Israel being present,

2 And said, The Lord gave orders to my lord to make distribution of the land as their heritage to the children of Israel: and my lord was ordered by The Lord to give the heritage of Zelophehad, our brother, to his daughters.

3 Now if they get married to any of the sons of other tribes of the children of Israel, then their property will be taken away from the heritage of our fathers, and become part of the heritage of the tribe into which they get married: and their heritage will be taken away from the heritage of our tribe.

4 And at the time of the Jubilee of the children of Israel, their property will be joined to the heritage of the tribe of which they are part and will be taken away from the heritage of the tribe of our fathers.

5 So by the direction of the Lord, Moses gave orders to the children of Israel, saying, What the tribe of the sons of Joseph have said is right.

6 This is the order of the Lord about the daughters of Zelophehad: the Lord says, Let them take as their husbands whoever is most pleasing to them, but only among the family of their father's tribe.

7 And so no property will be handed from tribe to tribe among the children of Israel; but every one of the children of Israel will keep the heritage of his father's tribe.

8 And every daughter owning property in any tribe of the children of Israel is to be married to one of the family of her father's tribe, so that every man of the children of Israel may keep the heritage of his fathers.

9 And no property will be handed from one tribe to another, but every tribe of the children of Israel will keep its heritage.

10 So the daughters of Zelophehad did as the Lord gave orders to Moses:

11 For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, took as their husbands the sons of their father's brothers:

12 And were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, and their property was kept in the tribe of their father's family

13 These are the laws and the orders which the Lord gave to the children of Israel by Moses, in the lowlands of Moab by Jordan at Jericho.

   

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.