Every daughter who inherits land in any Israelite tribe must marry someone in her father’s tribal clan, so that every Israelite will possess the inheritance of their ancestors. – Numbers 36:8

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 17, 2015): Numbers 36

Edward VIII grew up knowing that one day he would be king. At the time of his birth, during the reign of his Great Grandmother Queen Victoria, Edward was third in the line of succession for the throne, behind only his grandfather (who would become King Edward VII) and his father (who would become King George V). And as a young boy he probably began to dream of the things that he could do and what would happen when he was crowned king.

When he was six, Queen Victoria died moving him one step closer to his throne. And then a month and a half before his sixteenth birthday, his grandfather, Edward VII, died. His father became King George V and Edward became the heir apparent. And for the next quarter century, that is what Edward would remain, patiently waiting for the day that he would become king.

But by the time the forty-one year old Edward took the throne following his father’s death, things had changed. Being King did not mean as much to him as maybe it once had. Edward had fallen in love, but the love of his life was a divorced woman who was currently separated from her second husband. If Wallis Warfield could obtain her second divorce from Ernest Simpson, there was no question that Edward would invite her to marry him and become his queen. The problem was that Britain and the Commonwealth were not ready to have a twice divorced woman sitting on the throne as the Queen of England. During the first few months of Edward VIII’s reign, that was the only question that seemed to be discussed in the media and the centers of Government of the Commonwealth was about the King’s romantic entanglements. How could Edward have both the throne that he had waited so patiently for as well as the woman that he loved? Edward himself floated a few possible answers, including him marrying Wallis without her becoming Queen – instead she would take a lower royal title. But all of his solutions were rejected. In the end, Edward was given three choices – leave Wallis, marry Wallis and remain as king – a choice which would result in the resignation of the government and a constitutional crisis and likely a political backlash from most of the commonwealth countries, or abdicate the throne. In an ending that is fit for any fairy tale romance, the King of the United Kingdom chose his love and rejected his kingdom.

It is a similar choice that was left to the daughters of Israel who inherited land from their fathers. In a male dominated society, land followed the male. If a woman who possessed land married, the land would be passed on to her new husband. But if the husband was from a tribe different from the tribe of the daughter’s family, then land from one tribe would essentially be handed off to the other tribe – something that was not allowed under Mosaic Law. The reverse was not a problem, again because land in the society followed the man. So the result was that a man was able to marry anyone, even someone from another tribe, but the woman could only marry within her tribe. And if she did insist on marrying outside of her tribe, she would have to leave her inheritance behind – just like Edward VIII.

But for the daughters of Zelophehad, they chose to keep the kingdom – and the husbands that they chose were members of their father’s tribe, just as the law specified that they had to be.       

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 1