PINCHAS
Ann Lewis
The story of the daughters of Zelophehad has been cited as a rare biblical recognition of the rights of women. But, in the words of the current idiom, not so much. However, the story does have much to say about fairness and justice.
The daughters challenge the allocation of land in Israel to households with adult males capable of military service. Because their father had only daughters and clans are identified through the paternal line, Zelophehad’s name and heritage would be lost unless they are granted his share. Adonai agrees with their argument, grants their request and makes a general ruling dictating the line of inheritance, which is to include females under certain circumstances.
Zelophehad’s male relatives are not fully convinced; in Numbers 36:1-12 they appeal to Moses, pointing out that, should the daughters marry outside of the tribe, the land would be lost and the tribal allotted share permanently decreased. Moses agrees and directs that the daughters may marry anyone they choose, but that they must marry into a clan of their father’s tribe. He also makes more general rule that no land allotment may pass from one tribe to another, but must remain bound to the ancestral portion. In Joshua 17, the award of land to Zelophehad’s daughters is confirmed and the tribal tract of land identified.
Considering the entirety of the three passages which mention Zelophehad’s daughters, it becomes clear that the overriding interest being served is the preservation of the integrity of the tribal land grant rather than provision for the welfare of women who lack men in their households. The daughters’ success is not predicated on an abstract sense of equality and justice, but upon the interests of the tribe and clan.
The push and pull of competing claims and interests complicate the original, simple ruling. The allotment of land to the tribes is to be made according to the numbers derived from a census, larger allotments to the larger tribes and smaller to the smaller ones. Direct proportionality is appealing because it represents simple justice, in which tribes with more people get more land. But the census includes only able-bodied males over the age of twenty. What of the exceptions, in which the number of males does not proportionally represent the household? The complaint of Zelophehad’s daughters is addressed, but their right to marry as they choose is restricted after the tribal leaders protest that the ruling hurts the tribe by creating the possibility of losing its land to another through marriage. Does mean that the amended ruling is unfair to the daughters?
The process of determining what is fair and just is subject to a “Zen garden” effect, in that what one observes depends heavily on the viewpoint of the observer. In such gardens, composed of rocks and sand, you cannot see the whole arrangement from only one viewpoint; larger stones may conceal smaller ones nestled behind them, and patterns in the sand on another side of the garden may create the impression of water. As one walks around the edges of the garden, new perspectives reveal different arrangements of sand and rocks.
In my work as a court attorney referee in Surrogate’s Court, I mediated conflicts among family members as to the distribution of family estate property. Invariably, the warring sides were each confident of the essential rightness of their own positions and the essential wrongfulness of their opponents’ contentions. Each party was typically rock firm in their convictions and failed to concede the validity of the other’s point of view. Of course, if they were not fighting, I would not have been mediating, but their stubborn refusal to accept any other perspective on the dispute created problems for everyone.
To observers in a Zen garden, different perspectives can yield vastly differing perceptions. People standing on different sides of the garden would have difficulty agreeing on the number and arrangement of sand and stones unless they personally observe its changing aspects from several points of view. The same may be said of fairness and justice, which are also dependent on perspective. Apparently, simple justice is not simple.
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