The complexity of human rights.

The book of Bermidbo comes to a close that's very strange indeed.

Earlier in the Parish of Pinchas, we read of how the five daughters of Tzlovchad came to Moses with a claim

based on justice and human rights.

Their father had died without sons.

Inheritance, in this case a share in the land, passes through the male line. But here there was no male line.

Surely their father was entitled to his share and they were his only heirs. By rights, the share should come to them.

Why should our father's name be disadvantaged in his family,

merely because he didn't have a son? Give us a portion of the land, along with our father's brothers.

Well, Moses had received no instruction about such an eventuality, so he asked God directly,

and God found in favour of the women.

He came by not Tzlovchot, the daughters of Tzlovchad are right.

You shall give them possession of an inheritance among their father's brothers

and transfer the inheritance of their father to them.

He gave Moses further instructions about the disposition of inheritance and the narrative

then passes on to other matters.

Only now, right at the end of the book, many chapters later does the Torah report on an

event that arose directly from that case.

The leaders of Tzlovskhazd's tribe, Manasha, son of Joseph, came and made the following complaint.

If the land would have passed to Slavchod's daughters and they married men from another tribe,

the land would eventually pass to their husbands and thus to their husband's tribes.

Thus, the land that had initially been granted to the tribe of Manasha might be lost

...