n chapter 17<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut still, this is such a cool story that I don\u2019t mind this repetition. It\u2019s such a cool story that I find it terribly frustrating that more people aren\u2019t familiar with the awesome, thrice-told story of the other<\/em> Noah.<\/p>\nThis<\/em> 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\u2019t have to get into all of that to appreciate the bottom line of what\u2019s at stake for Noah and her sisters. Zelophehad didn\u2019t have any sons, and thus his daughters are about to be landless and dispossessed:<\/p>\nThe 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, \u201cOur 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\u2019s brothers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That reference to \u201cthe company of Korah\u201d sets the context here and gives us a sense of how high the stakes are for these women. Korah\u2019s story was told just a few chapters earlier in Numbers. He was a \u201cleader of the congregation\u201d and a \u201cwell-known man\u201d who challenged Moses\u2019 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:<\/p>\n
The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households \u2014 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That\u2019s 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\u2019 authority or the justice of any of those laws.<\/p>\n
Until now.<\/p>\n
Now Moses is again being confronted, but not by clan leaders and respected well-known men. He\u2019s being challenged by five sisters. The law, these sisters tell Moses, is not fair<\/em>. God\u2019s<\/em> law is not fair.<\/p>\nKeep in mind that theirs is a world that hasn\u2019t yet parsed out a thousand different words to create a distinction\u00a0between justice and righteousness. If God\u2019s law is unjust, then God\u2019s law is not righteous<\/em>. These women are not just challenging the authority of Moses and the authority of God, they\u2019re challenging the basis<\/em> for that authority. And they\u2019re doing it right there in front of the tabernacle, \u201cbefore Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and all the congregation.\u201d<\/p>\nI imagine that most of that congregation, remembering what just recently happened to Korah and his band, would be taking a few nervous steps backwards.<\/p>\n
But Moses doesn\u2019t condemn these sisters the way he did Korah. He thinks they make a good point. And so: \u201cMoses brought their case before the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s all he could do. We\u2019re talking about commandments here, remember, God\u2019s laws, divinely ordained, serious \u201cthus saith the Lord\u201d type stuff. And Moses doesn\u2019t have the authority to change that. All he can do is agree to go argue<\/em> with God, to attempt to change God\u2019s mind<\/em> and convince God to do the right thing.<\/p>\nThe story doesn\u2019t tell us what Moses said in bringing \u201ctheir case before the Lord.\u201d All it tells us is how God responded:<\/p>\n
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\u2019s brothers and pass the inheritance of their father on to them. You shall also say to the Israelites, \u201cIf a man dies, and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance on to his daughter. \u2026 It shall be for the Israelites a statute and ordinance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yup, God says. My bad. Those women are right. The law \u2014 my<\/em> law \u2014 isn\u2019t fair.<\/p>\nSo God changes<\/em> God\u2019s law to do right by Zelophehad\u2019s daughters. And, on the advice of\u00a0Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, God rewrites God\u2019s law for all of Israel.<\/p>\nWow. Right there, in the middle of the books of Moses, five women sued God and won their case.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just a way<\/em> better story than the one about the more-famous Noah.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. And because it’s a way better story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,44,50],"class_list":["post-30643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bible","tag-gender","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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