After Pentecost Devotional - Day 25

“You know that our father died in the desert. But it was for something he did wrong, not for joining with Korah in rebelling against Yahweh. Our father left no sons to carry on his family name. But why should his name die out for that reason? Give us some land like the rest of his relatives in our clan, so our father’s name can live on.” Numbers 27:3-4

We know the Old Testament is a patriarchal text. We know that women did not have rights of any significance, apart from what their fathers or husbands garnered for them. We know that in most cases women were little more than chattel, traded as prizes, bought and sold as wives. Women could not own property or even have their voice heard before the elders of a town on the same level as men. Then Numbers 27 enters the picture and destroys most of what we have come to know and expect of the Old Testament.

Rather than continuing the concept of male dominance and male ownership of the land, we find an exception here with regard to these four daughters of a man who died in the wilderness wandering. The women come forward asking for special dispensation to share in the division of the land in their deceased father's name. It is odd that these women would be granted an audience with Moses in regard to their father's participation in the distribution of the land. Odder still is the result of that audience.

It was extraordinary enough that these women came forward to ask for economic rights among the people. It was more extraordinary that they were granted an audience. More than that, however, it is extraordinary that Moses listened to them and did not simply brush their request aside. Rather, Moses turned to seek Yahweh's guidance.

For the cultural norms of the day, the response should have been only too obvious. There was little to no reason for anyone to believe that these women could receive their father's portion of land. The cultural norms for the entire region simply demanded that they be married off and live from the portion of land given to their husbands. Instead of simply accepting those norms at face value, Moses deemed this an issue important enough to seek God's guidance.

He returned with much more than these women expected. He returned with a judgment that was designed to set a precedent for all of Israel throughout its history. The decision was that these women should indeed receive the land that would have gone to their father. Furthermore, in any future case of a man leaving behind no male heirs, inheritance was to pass to any daughters before going to his brothers, uncles, or the next of kin.

So much for our concepts of what we are sure to find in the Old Testament. Obviously, the people did not always live up to the highest ideals set before them, but there are some rather progressive elements of economic and legal precedents set before us if we would pay attention. Rather than follow the cultural norms around the budding nation, much of the legal code sought to transform the nation according to much higher standards of inclusion for all people. Women, orphans, poor, foreigners, and strangers were given particular attention and protections. For too much of Christian history, we have missed the nature of grace behind the Mosaic code. It is this grace our own attitudes need to reflect.

Are you willing to look beyond the cultural norms around you to seek God's guidance on including people who still struggle as social outsiders?

"Lord, help me to see my responsibility to treat all people with your grace and mercy."


—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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