Text: Numbers 27:1-11

The last time I preached in this series on the women of the Hebrew Bible, we heard about Tamar. She’s the one who, though within her rights in the Hebrew law, used deception and trickery and covert methods to secure he position in her family and lineage. Today we’re encountering sort of the opposite: a group of women who forthrightly ask for – and receive – and amendment in the law to their advantage. They secure their family’s property rights for themselves even though they are women.

This story of these five daughters – the daughters of Zelophehad – makes me think about my mom’s family, in which there are also five daughters. The daughters of Cornelius are Denise, Rhonda, Shiela, Carol and Leanne.  But the world of my mom and aunts is very different from the world that Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah lived in. 

Denise, Rhonda, Sheila, Carol and Leanne are not considered the property of their spouses. They have all had jobs outside of caring for their children and their homes. They have bank accounts and can apply for credit, they have the right to vote and participate in government, they can travel and move about freely without the companionship of a male relative. They are not property.

It may be occurring to you, though, that my mother and her sisters – most of whom were born in the 1950s – may not always have had all of the freedoms that they and other women now have. For example, it wasn’t until the year of my birth, 1977, that The Canadian Human Rights Act was passed, forbidding discrimination on the basis of sex and ensuring equal pay for work of equal value for women. It was also only in the 70s that women could apply for a credit card without a co-signature from a father or husband.

So what is a woman to do who doesn’t have a father or husband? Change the law! That was the approach of the women in this story. 

There are a few things that are quite astonishing about this. First, that they were named – individually – and not referred to in the collective as their father’s daughters. Women were not even counted in the census never mind given names and standing in legal matters.

Second, these women had the courage and audacity to approach Moses, the great leader of his people. This was like bringing a case to the supreme court. In this uber-patriarchal context, I wonder where they got the idea that they might be received and that they had a claim. 

Third, they prevailed! They won the right to receive the property of their father after his death. And not only that, their case was precedent setting. Moses could have just granted this particular family their request but instead, God created a new property law.

The way that land ownership would have worked in ancient Israel was that lands were allocated to each of the 12 tribes. And then subdivided among clans and families. These allocations were intended to be permanent. They pass down in families and remain in the tribe. And the law of Jubilee is in place so that even if the lands are sold off, everything returns to the tribe in the Jubilee year when the economy is reset. (I look forward to exploring Jubilee and economic justice sometime together!)

In this legal system, however, when land is passed from generation to generation, it is always from father to son or sons. Daughters don’t figure into the picture. But the law didn’t account for this particular case of a father dying without male heirs and the law potentially going outside the tribe, which was not what the law intended. 

Maybe this was where Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah got the idea that they might be successful in their claim. They were good litigators, it seems. They argued on behalf of their father’s legacy and standing within his clan and tribal. With no sons to carry on his name and property, Zelophahad’s name would disappear unless the lands went to them.

The sisters didn’t gain equality or anything near to it but they did move the needle just a little on the place of women in their community. In some ways, that is still how it works. We who believe in justice and equity raise our voices and one unjust law is changed here, one a few years later.

And not only the law. People. Attitudes. In one of the first Mennonite Action meetings, Adam Ramer talked about the approach that they take in moving incrementally toward justice. To me at least it makes the work of changing hearts and minds feel hopeful and doable. 

Adam had us picture a semi-circular gauge. Actually we didn’t have to picture it, it was on the screen. He talked about a variety of attitudes across a segmented spectrum being represented on that gauge. On one end is someone very sympathetic to Palestinian liberation – ready to march in the street, and call reps, and carry disrupt institutions. On the other is a person who is completely closed to the idea of Palestinian rights never mind liberation. 

Our goal as participants in the movement of Mennonite Action is to engage with our communities – including our politicians, but also others with who we have relationships – and expect not a complete movement of the needle from one end of the gauge to the other, but maybe just from one segment to the next. And that there are many ways to engage with that work.

That way of seeing the movement made me feel like I might actually have a place in it when I have never seem myself as an activist. It feels too burdensome to have to convince someone who disagrees to think change their mind. But a small shift? Maybe doable. 

Mennonite Action hasn’t invented this idea. Almost every shift in our collective movement toward greater rights and freedoms has been a little at a time: all the rights that women have acquired, for a start. And at the same time, action in the courts can make big shifts in the rights and freedoms of a country’s citizens.

As I was preparing this, a message from the Apache Stronghold landed in my inbox. I’m not sure how familiar any of you are with the fight to maintain their land, known as Oak Flat. This is how they describe the issue on their website.
Oak Flat is a sacred site in the Tonto National Forest for the San Carlos Apache and other Native American Tribes in the region—a place to pray, collect water and medicinal plants, gather acorns, honor the people who are buried there, and perform sacred religious ceremonies. Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property and protected from mining since 1955 by President Eisenhower. Resolution’s underground mine would cause Oak Flat to collapse into a mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep crater. In 2014, the US government promised the land to foreign copper mining interests to build a copper mine. The Resolution Copper Project would create one of the largest copper mines in the US destroying this sacred site.
Talk about a story of land rights and legacy! The story for the Apache isn’t fully written yet. The outcome for their case is not yet known. Members of the Apache Stronghold are literally on their way to the Supreme Court in a journey of prayer to make their case again. This is the kind of case that could make a big difference for the Apache and impact other tribes’ relationships with the land and the government.

We Mennonites have had a mostly hands-off history with the legal systems in the countries where we’ve lived, but we’re coming to a place where we realize that our influence and advocacy can truly have an impact for justice, can move the needle toward greater equity for those most impacted by injustice. May we have the tenacity and courage of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, naming ways that laws and systems leave people out and let people down. And like them may we be heard by our leaders and by God. Amen.

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