Sisters Who Asked for Their Inheritance
Numbers 27:1–11; Joshua 17:3–6
Alone in the Wilderness
We huddled together in the frigid desert, staring into our meager fire. What a sight we were, the five daughters of Zelophehad—Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah—sunken in deep, silent sorrow. Many dozens of small lights surrounded us far into the horizon, each warming a family, some of them laughing together.
Tirzah, the youngest sister, interrupted our thoughts. “I don’t even remember mother anymore. Now father’s memory is also fading away, and we buried him only a few days ago.”
“The older generation is almost all gone now including Miriam and Aaron.” said Mahlah, the oldest, and the sister who reminded us of the traditions. “We are the new Children of Israel.”
“Daughters, forty years ago, it seems like yesterday,” we could remember Father’s words. “Moses sent spies into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. They returned carrying a huge cluster of grapes, but reported that giant people, whom we would never be able to conquer, inhabited the land. We were all afraid, except for Caleb and Joshua.” At this point in the story Father always sighed. “Because of our lack of trust, God said all people twenty years or older will die in the desert and not see the Promised Land. That was the reason God declared we would wander in this wilderness for forty years.” Father’s words remained with us.
“I can see the fire hovering in the sky above the Tent of the Tabernacle. That means we will be setting out again in the morning. We will also leave our father’s grave site,” observed Hoglah, the realist among us. “Yahweh, have mercy on us! What does the future hold?” The last remark struck our hearts cold, and again we were gripped with sorrow.
A fire by night that hovered over the Ark of the Covenant, or a cloud by day, was the sign of Yahweh’s leadership of the Children of Israel through the wilderness. A life of wandering was all we sisters have known, a life of nomads because we were all born in the wilderness. We could not imagine staying in a place long enough to plant a tree or a vine and see it grow to produce fruit.
The blast of trumpets woke us the next morning. “Pack up quickly, we are moving on toward the Jordan River,” men shouted at us. Without our father, they think we can be bossed around.
“All this talk about the Promised Land,” we complained among ourselves as we painfully got onto our feet. “We have only heard rumors our entire lives. Will we ever finally stop wandering?”
One of us gathered the fresh growth of manna that miraculously fell like rain every night around the camp. The little white flakes of vegetation were fresh and sweet every morning. “How many more ways can we cook manna?” Noah asked. “Remember the time we ate our fill of meat when flocks of partridge suddenly blew in from the west?”
“Now stop the complaining,” Mahlah warned. “It never brings any good.”
“Oh, yes, remember the snakes. The people complained, and they wished to have stayed in Egypt,” said Milcah who was not fond of snakes. “We know what Father told us about Egypt. He was still a boy during the Exodus, but he remembered the terrible times when the Israelites were captives. The Egyptians were cruel slave masters.”
“Well, the people forgot to be thankful, so venomous snakes appeared. They bit many people who died horrible deaths,” added Mahlah.
“So much death, must we always talk about death? I am tired of the fighting, the plagues, and our mothers who give birth, only to see their children die,” sighed Hoglah.
“But Yahweh sends mercy, too. Remember when Moses made a snake out of bronze and raised it high on a pole. Everyone who looked at that bronze snake and repented would live,” Noah added a lighter note.
We took down our tent and loaded up our wagon, which we had to pull ourselves. Our poverty was evident compared to the other travelers. We did not have a donkey or oxen to pull our load, as many families did. With heavy hearts, we joined the procession that started creaking forward. We took one more glance back at the small mound where our father was buried, never to see him again.
“Hey, get moving. We are sorry your father died, but you can’t hold up the caravan,” the men behind us shouted. “We are moving toward Moab.”
Every day we made progress toward the Jordan River. Sometimes we lugged the wagon uphill, other times we braced our backs against the front of the wagon to keep it from rolling downhill. Travel by itself was hard enough, but frequent fighting would also occur with the local inhabitants of whatever land we were passing through.
A cloud of dust rolled over the horizon toward us. It was the first frightful omen of an impending battle. Soon the ground would start to shake with the pounding of feet, a blast of trumpets, and then a crescendo of clanking weapons would follow.
“Why is Sihon, king of the Amorites, coming toward us with a huge army?” Tirzah asked. “Yahweh please, I don’t want to see any more fighting.”
“Sihon will not allow us to pass through his land, even though we promised not to use any water or take fruit from the fields,” said Mahlah. She always knew these things.
“The lands of Ammon, Moab, and Edom are not promised to the Children of Israel, so they should know there is no danger that we will try to take them. The land of Canaan is our Promised Land. We would not be fighting them if they did not attack us first.” Noah added. We had learned to trust that Yahweh would bring us victory, but it was hard to hold back the terror that gripped our dry throats.
The Israelite warriors rushed passed us to the front of the column with slings, bows, javelins, and swords. All of the rest of us fell back to relative safety, but we could certainly hear the cries and shouts of battle.
“How can we be sure that Yahweh really wants us to move on into this Promised Land? He constantly allows us to be attacked from all sides,” Hoglah said. She always asked the hard questions.
“But Yahweh also always sees us through the hardships, doesn’t he? The land may be promised to Israel, but the current residents refuse to acknowledge the rule of Yahweh. We have to strive toward possession with hardship and tears,” Mahlah said, always putting things into perspective for us.
It was enough to trudge forward day after day, one weary step at a time. Suddenly foreign armies appeared, angry shouts and fighting broke out, and we watched helplessly from a distance until Yahweh turned the tide and the battle was won. Afterward, when the fighting stopped, we had to walk past the field strewn with enemy bodies, injured horses, and broken chariots. We gathered bits of iron from broken enemy swords, which was a precious find. The Israelites only had weapons of softer bronze, and we did not have chariots drawn by horses. The enemy had better weapons than we did, yet we won battles because Yahweh gave us protection.
“They could have let us pass through their land peacefully; the fighting didn’t have to happen,” Milcah observed.
“Why does Yahweh allow death to occur, even to enemies?” Tirzah asked. She was wise beyond her years.
“Why don’t they join us in the worship of Yahweh, instead of their gods which are made by human hands? We have many foreigners with us that followed us out of Egypt,” Noah said, offering a solution. “Besides, Yahweh promised that all nations would be blessed through Abraham. Many foreigners are included in our history.”
We walked through empty villages where the women and children hid from us, only peering from behind vines and bushes like frightened animals. “I do not like the people being afraid of us,” our littlest sister observed.
“Are the Amorites really so bad that we had to fight with them?” Hoglah asked. “They think their gods are true and do not know any better.”
“They have heard about our God, Yahweh, and they can see how powerful, just, and, indeed, merciful he is, but their hearts are hard, they refuse to accept Yahweh,” Mahlah observed. “They do frightful things in their worship of Baal that are