Everybody is familiar with the story of Noah in the Bible, but many people don’t seem to realize that the Bible actually gives us two Noahs — two different stories about two very different people named Noah.
That’s odd, in part, because the story of the other Noah appears three times.
This repetition seems a bit like shoddy craftsmanship on the part of the biblical editors and compilers who first assembled these scriptures centuries ago. Hey, there, Mr. Editor of the Book of Numbers, you know this story you’re telling here in chapter 36? Didn’t you notice that you’d already included this exact same story back in chapter 27? And I don’t know if you’ve also read the book of Joshua, but the same story is in there, too, in chapter 17.
But still, this is such a cool story that I don’t mind this repetition. It’s such a cool story that I find it terribly frustrating that more people aren’t familiar with the awesome, thrice-told story of the other Noah.
This Noah is one of five sisters, the daughters of a man named Zelophehad. Moses has just explained the allotments of land that the people of Israel will inherit in the Promised Land. This system is based on tribes and clans and inheritance to be passed down from fathers to sons. Numbers explains all of this in far greater detail than most readers will care to follow, but we don’t have to get into all of that to appreciate the bottom line of what’s at stake for Noah and her sisters. Zelophehad didn’t have any sons, and thus his daughters are about to be landless and dispossessed:
The names of his daughters were: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and all the congregation, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and they said, “Our father died in the wilderness; he was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah, but died for his own sin; and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from his clan because he had no son? Give to us a possession among our father’s brothers.”
That reference to “the company of Korah” sets the context here and gives us a sense of how high the stakes are for these women. Korah’s story was told just a few chapters earlier in Numbers. He was a “leader of the congregation” and a “well-known man” who challenged Moses’ authority along with 250 other respected men who led their clans and families. By challenging the authority of Moses, that story says, Korah and his company were challenging the very authority of God. That, this story says, carries rather extreme consequences:
The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households — everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they with all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.
That’s the context here. Moses speaks for God. The laws that Moses has just explained are laws given by God. And ever since the ground opened up to swallow Korah and his friends, no one in Israel has dared to question Moses’ authority or the justice of any of those laws.
Until now.
Now Moses is again being confronted, but not by clan leaders and respected well-known men. He’s being challenged by five sisters. The law, these sisters tell Moses, is not fair. God’s law is not fair.
Keep in mind that theirs is a world that hasn’t yet parsed out a thousand different words to create a distinction between justice and righteousness. If God’s law is unjust, then God’s law is not righteous. These women are not just challenging the authority of Moses and the authority of God, they’re challenging the basis for that authority. And they’re doing it right there in front of the tabernacle, “before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and all the congregation.”
I imagine that most of that congregation, remembering what just recently happened to Korah and his band, would be taking a few nervous steps backwards.
But Moses doesn’t condemn these sisters the way he did Korah. He thinks they make a good point. And so: “Moses brought their case before the Lord.”
That’s all he could do. We’re talking about commandments here, remember, God’s laws, divinely ordained, serious “thus saith the Lord” type stuff. And Moses doesn’t have the authority to change that. All he can do is agree to go argue with God, to attempt to change God’s mind and convince God to do the right thing.
The story doesn’t tell us what Moses said in bringing “their case before the Lord.” All it tells us is how God responded:
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: The daughters of Zelophehad are right in what they are saying; you shall indeed let them possess an inheritance among their father’s brothers and pass the inheritance of their father on to them. You shall also say to the Israelites, “If a man dies, and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance on to his daughter. … It shall be for the Israelites a statute and ordinance.”
Yup, God says. My bad. Those women are right. The law — my law — isn’t fair.
So God changes God’s law to do right by Zelophehad’s daughters. And, on the advice of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, God rewrites God’s law for all of Israel.
Wow. Right there, in the middle of the books of Moses, five women sued God and won their case.
That’s just a way better story than the one about the more-famous Noah.
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