2BC BIBLE STUDY NOTES

Wednesday in the Word

Second Baptist Church

March 11, 2020

Numbers 27:1-11

1. Verses 1-8. Some of the issues we will deal with today are the idea of an exception and fairness. God tells Moses something, but there will need to be an exception to this rule. God gives general rules, and every now and then, the general rule won't apply, and an additional measure will need to be used to accommodate a situation with fairness. Moses doesn’t initiate the exception, but some people who see that they don’t fit into the general rule bring it before Moses, and God declares to Moses that the people who are initially not included are correct and should be included. Let's take a look. Because the generation who was given the Law at Mt. Sinai is now dead and gone, the more important laws and principles are being repeated and reinforced for the new generation of Hebrew whose parents had first received the Law but they were now buried in the desert sands. And the first thing we encounter is a case whereby a family headed by a man named Zelophehad, now deceased, has a problem; and that problem is that Zelophehad left no sons to inherit so his daughters come to Moses and ask why it would be so wrong for THEM to inherit their father's wealth, even though they weren't males. Their reasoning is stated in verses 3 and 4; and in a nutshell it is that a) their father had NOT participated in the great apostasy of Korah (when a fire came out of the Tabernacle and burned up many rebellious men, and an earthquake opened up a fissure which swallowed thousands of people.....families of the rebels); and b) their father had died under the same curse that all the other people who left Egypt had (they failed to trust the Lord and go forth into the Promised Land). Further, since all the other families whose men had committed the same sin were NOT being denied rights to land in Canaan, why should their father's family be denied land merely because he had no sons to inherit his portion? Moses listens to the plea of these women and says he will take the case before the Lord. If we look closely, after Mt. Sinai this sort of method of having additional laws added became normal. And the same concept is used to this day in our American legal system; it's called precedent. A situation would arise (without previous precedent) and it would be brought to Moses, the judge, to decide. He would then take it to the Lord who would decide the matter. Moses would inform the parties of Yahweh's decision and THEN the matter became law based on precedent. Generally speaking, all similar matters were to be handled in the same way in the future. Therefore, we have generally two classifications and methods of receiving laws from Yahweh: by oracle (like on Mt. Sinai), and by precedent when a situation demands a remedy and so is taken to YAHWEH and He decides it. As to the concept of a family leader dying and there being only daughters and no sons to inherit, the Lord says that daughters MAY inherit what would normally have been given to the sons. And the Lord then takes some additional obvious and probably quite usual cases regarding succession of inheritance and makes them law as well. If a father dies without a son, his wealth goes to his daughters. If that man has no children at all, it goes to his own brothers. If he has no brothers at all, it goes to his uncles on his father's side. If the man didn't even have uncles on his father’s side, then the nearest family relative whether on the mother's or the father's side will inherit the family property. There was a need to make an addendum to the rule to accommodate the issue of fairness. Whenever there is a need to adjust for fairness, we need to be willing to make an exception. We need to be careful when looking at things too rigidly because God might be willing to make an exception for fairness. I like the idea that Moses brings the matter before the Lord as opposed to making the decisions without consulting God.

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