¹ Then the heads of families of the clan descended from Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh, one of the clans descended from Joseph, came forward and, addressing Moses and the leaders, the Israelite heads of families,

² they said: 'Yahweh has ordered my lord to apportion the Israelites' heritages in the country by lot and my lord has been ordered by Yahweh to give the heritage of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters.

³ Now, if they marry someone from another Israelite tribe, their heritage will be alienated from our ancestral heritage. The heritage of the tribe to which they will then belong will be increased, and the heritage allotted to us will be diminished.

⁴ And when the jubilee for the Israelites comes round, these women's heritage will become part of the heritage of the tribe to which they then belong, and be alienated from the heritage of our ancestral tribe.'

⁵ At Yahweh's bidding, Moses gave the Israelites this order. He said: 'What the Josephite tribe says is true.

⁶ This is Yahweh's ruling for Zelophehad's daughters: "They may marry whom they please, providing they marry into a clan of their father's tribe.

⁷ But the heritages of Israelites are not to be transferred from tribe to tribe; each Israelite will stick to the heritage of his own tribe.

⁸ Any daughter who owns a heritage in an Israelite tribe will marry into a clan of her own paternal tribe, so that the Israelites may each preserve the heritage of his father.

⁹ No heritage may be transferred from one tribe to another; each Israelite tribe will stick to its own heritage." '

¹⁰ Zelophehad's daughters did as Yahweh had ordered Moses.

¹¹ Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah, daughters of Zelophehad, married the sons of their father's brothers.

¹² Since they married into clans descended from Manasseh son of Joseph, their heritage reverted to the tribe of their father's clan.

¹³ Such were the commandments and laws that Yahweh prescribed for the Israelites through Moses on the Plains of Moab near the Jordan by Jericho.