Zelophehad's Daughters

Originally Published in 2010 at Quivering Daughters.com 

(Cindy Kunsman featured as a guest author.)

An acquaintance of mine asked me what I knew of some of the ideas that neo-patriarchy had about unmarried women living alone. I explained that some sectors within patriarchy maintain that Numbers 30 requires unmarried adult women to have an assigned male overseer who is accountable for her and her affairs. Others in these circles maintain that all woman require a male as her a protector at all times to remain both spiritually and physically safe. Some actually extend this concept to support their idea that a woman who works outside the home (for a man other than father or husband) commits a form of adultery by serving the vision and efforts of another man.

My friend pointed out the account of the Daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27:1-11. They asked me why I had never cited this example in the past as evidence against patriarchy’s overtly paternalistic take on Numbers 30, and I did not have a good answer! Perhaps because it takes me a while to process the dramatic events of the previous chapter where the sons of Korah are swallowed up alive into hell for rebelling against Moses’ leadership, I glossed over the significance of this account. I did not remember anything about these daughters, and I didn’t recall their father’s name. I certainly know them now! (That’s the cool thing about Bible Study: I expect to discover a new thing that I’d passed over before or understood only marginally, and I expect that this will happen for the rest of my life.)

Numbers 27 introduces the Daughters of Zelophehad to us: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, also tracing their lineage. Zelophehad was the great, great grandson of Manasseh, one of Joseph’s two sons. These daughters went to the Tent of Meeting and spoke directly to Moses, Eleazar (the priest), the leaders of the tribes and the congregation. They explained to Moses that their father who had borne only daughters died in the wilderness, but that he did not participate in the rebellion of the Sons of Korah. The daughters asked if their father’s name must die out because he had borne no sons and requested to be granted their father's portion of the inheritance that was set aside for Manasseh’s heirs. Verse 5 tells us that Moses brought the case of Zelophehad’s daughters directly before God.

God ruled that Zelophehad’s daughters were entitled to receive their father’s inheritance and established that if a man dies and leaves no son, that man’s inheritance should be passed to the father’s surviving daughters. If he had no daughters, the inheritance should be given to the man’s brothers or the nearest relative to keep the inheritance within the family.

If unmarried women must be assigned to a male governor who oversees their process of sanctification and protection, how is it that these daughters who were the offspring one of the house of Joseph who remained faithful to God were treated so favorably? God tells Moses to give their father’s inheritance directly to them. God doesn’t use this as an opportunity to spell out the rule that women must be assigned to a man for decision making, bestowing the inheritance upon an elected man whom God assigns to them. God doesn’t instruct Moses to find a “male covering” for these unmarried women. 

Consider that these daughters also had recourse to approach Moses directly. They did not need a man or other representative to speak to Moses for them. Many women who follow strict patriarchy are denied status to even read Scripture or pray in church sanctuaries, addressing the congregation. Some churches don’t even let a woman speak to remind everyone about the “pot providence” (in place of what most people refer to as a “pot luck” meal) in the basement after the conclusion of a worship service! Yet the Daughters of Zelophehad spoke confidently and directly to Moses who took their plea directly to God. God rewarded them and established these standards for all of Israel.

In full context within close proximity to the Numbers 30 passage, does Numbers 27 support the model for women taught by many within neo-patriarchy? I think not. The account of the Daughters of Zelophehad discounts the claim that all women require male oversight and protection. Property and inheritance require good stewardship, and stewardship requires a certain degree of authority and personal autonomy. God Himself rewarded the faithful daughters with their father’s inheritance, and He did not discriminate against them because of their gender.

How I Discovered That I Was Enmeshed

Provided they called them “Neonatal Intensive Care Units” back in the 1960s, when I was born, that's where I spent the better part of the first two weeks of my life. Due to aspiration of amniotic fluid, I displayed all the signs of such severe brain damage at birth, my parents were told I would not live. My grandfather went out and bought my burial plot that very day because my prognosis seemed inevitable.

Thanks to what was explained to my mother as nothing short of a miracle (a mighty saga in and of itself), I was discharged to home as a normal infant at the ripe old age of 14 days. I had what was likely colic, and my mother experienced a great deal of anxiety and depression. Years later, during my clinical experience in Labor and Delivery when my nursing instructor discussed the Standard of Care for new mothers and babies, she listed the psychological symptoms that NICU babies demonstrate later in life. As a 17 year old nursing student, I felt like the finger of God reached down out of heaven and pointed at my notebook as I scribbled down the details. My own childhood manifested every symptom the instructor listed that day – what the profession attributes to the lack of bonding between infant and mother at birth. I had a long history of childhood depression, school phobia and coping difficulties.

I passed the State Board Exam to become an RN at age 19, and after 5 months on the job, I was so depressed I could barely cope anymore. My preceptor, a nurse with 15 years of experience training new graduates on the oncology/urology unit where I worked said that she “didn't know what to do with me.” Very proficient at all the things that all those new graduates who preceded me struggled with – the book knowledge and clinical problem-solving skills – my preceptor stated her amazement at how slowly I performed what I call the “grunt work of nursing.” I hated and still hate a large portion of this type of work and the routine role of the nurse (outside of the high level ICU setting and basic physical care and nurture of patients), so I attributed my profound depression to this cause. 

I explained my plight to the Employee Assistance Program counselor, which to me involved little of my family of origin, so I was shocked and angered when I was diagnosed with “Adjustment Disorder” related to my age and life transition with conflict – not because of a poor career choice for my personality which wa a factor, but rather with my mother as the central feature of my difficulties. I remained in counseling for nearly three more years (and started working in a high-level critical care program), until just a year before I married and moved far away from home.

During this period while I lived at home and completed an additional year of college to obtain my BSN, I experienced a powerful clinical practicum while studying addictions and recovery. At an excellent detox program at a hospital in South Philadelphia, during a group therapy observation, I had a profound realization about myself. I listened to a group of people who were about my own age talk about why they became addicts. At the end of the session, the therapist leading the session permitted me to speak. Through my tears, I explained to the group that the only difference between them and me was the fact that they used addictive substances and I did not. Their stories (up until they started using) and their feelings were identical to mine. My wounds were the same and the pain they described was not a bit different from my own pain. Through my faith in Christ, I followed their equivalent of the “12 Step Program,” but I medicated through workaholism and people pleasing. That afternoon, I shared about twenty hugs and tears with strangers who were also very much my siblings in the commonality of what I would later call codependency, an ineffective set of coping mechanisms for my lifelong adjustment disorder.

Now, jump forward a year or two in time with me. When getting fitted for a gown for a friend's wedding, I purchased a suitable and unique wedding dress that could easily be carried in an overnight bag for an elopement. At that time, my husband decided that he wanted a wedding because he believed it was the right thing to do. My parents actually offered to pay us to elope because my mother was terrified that I would “embarrass her family.”

Just a few weeks before the wedding, the stress at my parent's home was so great that I lamented and wept over the phone to my spiritual/academic mentor's wife. She confronted me with my history and my behavior that day, encouraging me to read “Love is a Choice” (by Hemfelt, Minerth and Meier), asking me if I knew anything about codependency. I soaked in her compassionate empathy, but the thought of codependency angered me. I didn't read the book because “I was not anything like those lunatics on Oprah!” I didn't want to be anything like them at all, and a part of me was highly offended that she suggested such a thing. In my mind, I had transcended all of that history and made perfect peace with my parents.

Two years later, I'd take a job working on a newly reorganized cardiac unit after relocating to the Midwest from the Deep South. I'd lived 1,500 miles away from my parents, but NOT the old, familiar dynamics. The nurse manager of the huge progressive coronary care and intensive care unit who had recently hired me as her assistant manager confronted me with the same message that my mentor's wife had done – my behaviors were consistent with codependency. I could not take responsibility for a 48 telemetry patients and 8 CCU patients and an 8 bed cardiac cath recovery area and play the martyr, believing that every deficiency in that corner of the universe was my fault. In the middle of the crest of that last horrible nursing shortage (preceding the current one), I could not “fill in the gap” with my herculean efforts to save the world. It was then that I finally purchased a copy of “Love is a Choice,” just as I went off to a week long professional meeting in, away from the rest of the world for awhile. I roomed with two wonderful Christians who ministered to me like angels as I went through that book. And I realized the cruel reality that I had actually accumulated enough life-experience material from which Oprah could derive a week of material! I've even added another show to this since that time, if anyone would ever feature the topic of spiritual abuse in Evangelical and Biblical Christian churches!

I started back in therapy (after about about a two and a half year respite), and I read voraciously. I lived near Oklahoma City, and there was a great bookstore on the Northwest side of town. The right books just seemed to jump off the shelves into my hands, and what Christian titles didn't, CBD delivered to my apartment door. In addition to “Love is a Choice,” David Stoop's and Chris Thurman's titles were life changing for me. Of equal value to me were these titles on the topic of covert or emotional incest, and nearly every book I read during that time made it unavoidable, disturbing and validating. A few years later, I donated many of those books to the church library, and I'm so glad that I did! A

t the time, I didn't recognize how codependent the church's leadership style and Gothard/Shepherding/Discipleship doctrine really was. I still pray that those books will spread many seeds of truth there. I gave away my copy of Patricia Love's book because I'd given it to a woman there who was going through a miserable divorce. The church leadership there supported her “rage-aholic” husband through both court testimony and in church discipline against her. The husband started taking their 6 year old son to bed with him for his own comfort after he made it impossible for my friend to remain at home and impossible for her to take even their youngest child with her when she left. She held my copy of “The Emotional Abuse Syndrome” up to the judge in court when she discussed her husband's manipulative and abusive behavior in their marriage and family. (The account of those events is yet another saga of its own.)