- 24-
CHAPTER 3 : The Second Census Of Israel - The " Daughters Of
Zelophehad" -Appointment Of Moses' Successor - Sacrificial Ordinances -
The War Against Midian - Allocation Of Territory East Of The Jordan -
Levitical And Cities Of Refuge.
(NUMBERS 26-36)
BEFORE describing the closing scene of Moses' life, we may here conveniently group
together brief notices of the events intervening between the judgment of "the plague" on
account of Israel's sin (Numbers 25) and the last discourses of Moses recorded in the
Book of Deuteronomy.
- A second census of Israel was taken by Divine direction (Numbers 26). The
arrangements for it were in all probability the same as those at the first census, thirty-
eight years before (Numbers 1).^44 The "plague" had swept away any who might yet
have remained of the old doomed generation, which had come out of Egypt. At any rate,
none such were now left (Numbers 26:64). This may have been the reason for taking a
new census. But its main object was in view of the approaching apportionment of the
land which Israel was so soon to possess. Accordingly, the census was not taken as
before (Numbers 1), according to the number of individuals in each tribe, but according
to "families." This corresponded in the main^45 with the names of the grandsons and
great-grandsons of Jacob, enumerated in Genesis 46. In reference to the future division
of the land, it was arranged that the extent of the "inheritance" allotted to each tribe
should correspond to its numbers (Numbers 26:52-54). But the exact locality assigned
to each was to be determined "by lot" (vers. 55, 56), so that each tribe might feel that it
had received its "possession" directly from the Lord Himself.
The proposed division of the land brought up a special question of considerable
importance to Israel. It appears that one Zelophehad, of the tribe of Manasseh, and of
the family of Gilead, had died - not in any special judgment, but along with the
generation that perished in the wilderness. Having left no sons, his daughters were
anxious to obtain a "possession," lest their father's name should be "done away from
among his family" (Numbers 27). By Divine direction, which Moses had sought, their
request was granted,^46 and it became "a statute of judgment" in Israel - a juridical statute
- that daughters, or in their default - the nearest kinsman, should enter upon the
inheritance of those who died without leaving sons.
In all such cases, of course the children of those who obtained the possession would
have to be incorporated, not with the tribe to which they originally belonged, but with
that in which their "inheritance" lay. Thus the "name" of a man would not "be done
away from among his family." Nor was this "statute" recorded merely on account of its
national bearing, but for higher reasons. For this desire to preserve a name in a family in
(^)