Numbers 27 Summary and Study Guide

Five sisters walked up to the tabernacle door, stood in front of Moses, the high priest and the whole assembly of Israel, and asked for land. This Numbers 27 summary and study guide covers that hearing in the book of Numbers, and what God told Moses next: he would die outside the country he had spent forty years walking toward.

Setting the Stage

God promised Abraham’s descendants a country of their own (Genesis 12:7). Centuries later, standing at its southern border, Israel refused to go in. God’s answer was that every adult who refused would die in the desert and their children would enter instead (Numbers 14:29-31).

Thirty-eight years of wandering followed, and that generation died out. Then God had the survivors counted, exactly as He had counted their parents at Sinai, and this second count had one purpose: the land was about to be divided among the families it named (Numbers 26:52-56). Only men aged twenty and over were counted. One of the men who had died was Zelophehad, and he left five daughters and no son (Numbers 26:33).

Comprehensive Numbers 27 Summary

The census had counted men, so a household with no son had nobody on the register and would receive no land. That is where the chapter opens. Zelophehad’s five daughters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, come to the tabernacle door where the leaders of Israel sit to hear cases.

Their father died in the desert, but he was not one of Korah’s rebels, whose households lost everything with them. He died under the sentence that fell on his whole generation. So why should his name disappear from his family just because he had no son? Give us land among our father’s relatives.

Moses does not rule on it. He takes the case to God, and God answers that the daughters are right, orders their father’s portion transferred to them, and turns the ruling into permanent law: if a man dies with no son, his land goes to his daughter, then to his brothers, then to his uncles, then to his nearest relative.

Then God tells Moses to climb Mount Abarim, look at the land, and be gathered to his people as Aaron was, because of what happened at the waters of Meribah. Moses accepts it without protest and asks for one thing, and it is for the people: that God appoint a man over Israel so the nation is not left like sheep with no shepherd.

God names Joshua, and tells Moses to lay his hand on him, present him to Eleazar the priest and the whole assembly, give him a charge in public, transfer some of his own authority to him, and set him under the priest’s counsel by the Urim. Moses does it, and lays on both hands.

One Word Summary

• Inheritance: the question both halves answer.
• Succession: a leader replaced in public, before he dies.
• Standing: the uncounted ask for a place and get one.

In One Sentence

The five daughters of Zelophehad ask Moses for their dead father’s share of the promised land and God rules in their favour, and in the same chapter God tells Moses he will see that land and die outside it, and names Joshua to lead Israel in.

Theme of Numbers 27

Numbers 27 is about inheritance: who receives the land God promised, and on what terms. Three ideas run alongside it. God hears an appeal brought to Him and answers it Himself, in words nobody can argue with.

A name can outlive the person who carried it, which is what the daughters were fighting for and what turns Moses being gathered to his people into a comfort. And a nation about to lose its leader is given another one, chosen and installed by God in public, so the inheritance still has somebody to bring Israel into it.

Numbers 27 Outline

• Numbers 27:1-4: The five daughters of Zelophehad come to the tabernacle door and ask for their father’s share of the land, because he died without a son.
• Numbers 27:5-7: Moses takes the case to the LORD, who says the daughters are right and orders their father’s inheritance transferred to them.
• Numbers 27:8-11: God turns the ruling into a permanent law of succession for all Israel.
• Numbers 27:12-14: The LORD tells Moses to climb Abarim, see the land and be gathered to his people, and names Meribah as the reason he will not enter.
• Numbers 27:15-17: Moses asks the LORD to set a man over the congregation so Israel is not left as sheep without a shepherd.
• Numbers 27:18-21: The LORD names Joshua and gives Moses five instructions for installing him.
• Numbers 27:22-23: Moses does it, laying his hands on Joshua before Eleazar the priest and the whole congregation.

The Law of Inheritance

Israel already had a rule for sons: they divided their father’s estate, with the eldest taking a double portion (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). A daughter was provided for differently. She received a dowry when she married, and after that her husband’s household kept her and her sons inherited from him, so land did not normally need to pass to her.

That arrangement leaves nothing for a woman with no father, no brother and no husband, which is exactly where Zelophehad’s five daughters were standing. Verses 8 to 11 set out what happens when there is no son.

The ladder stops at the nearest relative because inside a tribe there is always somebody who qualifies. A woman could already hold land, since a father was free to grant a portion to a daughter if he chose. Verse 8 took the choice out of his hands: where there was no son, the daughter now had a right.

Moses’ Prayer

And Moses spake unto the LORD, saying, Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd. (Numbers 27:15-17)

Moses addressed God as the one who gives life to every living thing. He asked Him to appoint a leader for the nation, someone who would go ahead of the people and take them out and bring them home. He gave his reason: Israel should not be left like a flock with nobody in charge of it.

• Who he addresses. The God of the spirits of all flesh. Moses had used that title once before, when Korah’s rebellion put the leadership of Israel in question (Numbers 16:22). Both times he was asking God to act as the one who knows what is inside every person.
• What he asks for. A man set over the congregation. He does not put forward a name, not even one of his own sons, and he does not suggest the people choose.
• The four things that man must do. Go out before them, go in before them, lead them out, and bring them in. The first pair describes his own life among them, the second describes what he does with them.
• The reason he gives. That Israel would not be sheep without a shepherd. Commentators point out that a shepherd there led from the front and the flock followed him out to pasture, rather than driving it from behind. That is what makes the four verbs above one picture.

Observations from Numbers 27

Both Halves of the Chapter Ask the Same Question (Numbers 27:4, 12-13)

Five people with no standing in the register ask for a share in the promised land and receive one. Moses brought Israel to the edge of that land, and the next thing he is told is that he will look at it and die outside it. Both halves turn on who receives the inheritance and on what terms, and both turn on a name surviving a death.

The daughters were afraid their father’s name would be wiped out of his family. God’s answer to Moses holds the same fear and settles it: he will see the land, he will die the way his brother Aaron did, and he will be gathered to his people rather than cut off from them.

God Gave More Than They Asked For (Numbers 27:4, 7)

In verse 4 the sisters ask for a possession among their father’s relatives. In verse 7 God grants them a possession of an inheritance, which commentators note is a stronger phrase in the Hebrew: not only land, but land they can pass to their own heirs. They asked to be treated as their father’s household. God answered as though their father had had sons.

Moses Answers a Death Sentence by Praying for Somebody Else (Numbers 27:13, 15-17)

Verse 13 tells Moses he is going to die. Verse 15 is the next thing he says, and it is a request for Israel’s next leader. He had already asked once to be allowed to cross over and had been refused (Deuteronomy 3:23-26), and he does not ask again.

Moses spent forty years being blamed by these people. His last recorded prayer is about them, and what worries him is that they will be left with nobody to care for them.

Moses Would Not Settle It Himself (Numbers 27:5)

Moses had authority to judge Israel, and he had a standing order that covered this case: divide the land among those counted, and those counted were men. He could have applied it and sent the sisters home with an answer. He carried the case to God instead, and waited.

Jewish tradition remembers four occasions when he did that, cases the law as given did not reach, and this is one of them. So the chapter also shows how a new law arrived in Israel: somebody brought God a situation nobody knew what to do with.

Joshua Is Installed and Limited by the Same Instruction (Numbers 27:20-21)

Moses is told to put some of his honour on Joshua, not all of it. And Joshua is to stand before Eleazar the priest, who will ask counsel for him by the Urim, where Moses had spoken with God directly (Numbers 12:6-8; Deuteronomy 34:10). Israel gets a real leader, and the same instruction that hands him to the nation also tells the nation he is not Moses. Joshua later found out what that mediated counsel was for, on the day he made a treaty with the Gibeonites without asking for it (Joshua 9:14).

Common Misunderstandings

• That the five sisters’ names carry a hidden gospel meaning. An allegory circulates that reads their names as a sequence of Christian experience, running from fear through wandering to joy. Adam Clarke printed that reading in his commentary in order to dismiss it, calling it a specimen of pious ingenuity. The chapter gives their names for the same reason Numbers 26:33 and Joshua 17:3 give them: these were real women with a legal claim, and the record needed to say who they were.
• That we know what Zelophehad’s sin was. Verse 3 says he died in his own sin. Most commentators read that as the sentence on his whole generation for refusing to enter the land, and some read it as ordinary human sinfulness. There is also an old Jewish tradition identifying him with the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath in Numbers 15, which Calvin rejected outright. Scripture does not name it, and the sisters’ point is only that it was not the kind of sin that disqualifies a family.
• That the sisters were after property for themselves. Verse 4 gives their reason, and it is their father’s name. In Israel a family’s name and its portion of land could not be separated, so a household with no land had no continuing name.
• That Moses climbs the mountain in this chapter. God gives the command here. Moses climbs it at the very end of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 34:1-5), with everything from Numbers 28 to Deuteronomy 33 in between.

Christ Connection

The clearest connection is the one Jesus made Himself. Moses asked for a leader so that Israel would not be as sheep which have no shepherd (Numbers 27:17), and centuries later Matthew records that Jesus, looking at the crowds, “was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). Jesus felt sorry for them because they were worn out and scattered, like a flock with nobody leading it.

Mark reports the same reaction and adds what He did about it, which was to teach them (Mark 6:34). Then Jesus applied the answer to Himself: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Moses asked God for a man, and God gave him Joshua. The Shepherd Jesus claimed to be meets the same need at a depth Joshua never could.

The rest of the chapter points the same direction, in ways the New Testament names.

• Joshua carries the name. Joshua means the LORD saves, and the Greek New Testament writes it the same way it writes the name Jesus. Hebrews 4:8-9 makes the comparison directly: Joshua brought Israel into the land, but the rest he gave them was not the final one, and a rest still remains for the people of God.
• Heirs who had no claim under the old terms. Five women with no place on the register received a hereditary possession because they asked and God ruled for them. Paul names the fulfilment: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28-29). Everyone who belongs to Christ inherits, whatever their standing was before. Peter calls it an inheritance kept in heaven that cannot fade (1 Peter 1:4) and calls husband and wife heirs together of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7).
• A servant, and a Son. Moses saw the land and could not enter it. Hebrews 3:5-6 sets that in its place: Moses was faithful in God’s house as a servant, and Christ is over it as a Son. The exclusion in verse 12 points toward a mediator who is not shut out of anything. There is an answer to it as well, because Moses appears once more in Scripture, standing with Christ on a mountain at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3), which many have read as his entry at last into the country he was refused.
• A succession that never has to happen again. Joshua received some of Moses’ honour and asked counsel through a priest, because Moses was dying. Hebrews 7:23-25 says the old priests were many “because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death”, but Christ holds an unchangeable priesthood, “wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.”

When, Where, and Why

• When: The fortieth year after Israel left Egypt, immediately after the second census, with the nation camped in the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho (Numbers 26:3, 63). The closing chapters of Numbers are not arranged strictly in order of time, and the command of verse 12 is not carried out until Deuteronomy 34.
• Where: Two places. The tabernacle door inside the camp, where the leaders sat to hear cases so that a hard one could be referred to God, and Mount Abarim for the second half. Abarim is the ridge of high ground running along the east side of the Dead Sea and the lower Jordan; Nebo is a mountain in that range and Pisgah its highest point (Deuteronomy 32:49; 34:1). The name Abarim may mean passages, possibly because Israel crossed the Jordan opposite it.
• Why: Moses is putting two things on public record before he dies, so that neither can be disputed afterward: the rule by which the land was divided, and the identity of the man God chose to lead Israel into it.

Key Verses

The daughters of Zelophehad speak right … and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. (Numbers 27:7)

God said the daughters were correct, and ordered that the portion of land their father would have received be handed over to them. This is the verdict, and it is God speaking rather than Moses. The whole assembly heard the case; God settled it in their favour in His own words.

For ye rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the water before their eyes: that is the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin. (Numbers 27:14)

God told Moses and Aaron they had disobeyed His instruction during the quarrel at Kadesh, and had failed to treat Him as holy in front of the people at the water there. God says it plainly to the man He spoke with face to face, and He does not soften it or withdraw it. You can read the whole of that failure in our study of Numbers 20.

Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd. (Numbers 27:17)

Moses asked for a leader who would live among the people and walk ahead of them, marching them out and bringing them back again, and he did not want Israel abandoned like unattended livestock. This one sentence is what the back half of the chapter answers, because God’s reply in the very next verse is a name.

Key Lessons from Numbers 27

• Moses would not settle a case he had no instruction for, and took it to God instead of deciding it himself (Numbers 27:5).
• The daughters asked for a share in land Israel had not yet conquered, which means their claim was an act of faith in a promise God had not yet kept (Numbers 27:4).
• God answered five people the census had not even counted, and He answered them in front of everyone who had overlooked them (Numbers 27:7).
• God did not withdraw the consequence of Meribah from Moses, even while giving him the kindness of seeing the land (Numbers 27:12-14).
• Told he was going to die, Moses prayed for the people rather than for himself (Numbers 27:15-17).
• Leadership in Israel came as God’s gift and did not pass to Moses’ own sons, which cost Moses something and told the nation who was really in charge (Numbers 27:18-23).

To see how this chapter fits the rest of the book, read our full walk through every chapter: The Book of Numbers Summary by Chapter.

To go deeper into what this chapter teaches, read our full study: Lessons from Numbers 27.

Bible Study Questions

1. In Numbers 27:3 the sisters say two things about their father before they ask for anything. Why does each of those two statements matter to their case?
2. Verse 4 gives their reason for asking, and it is not the land itself. What does that tell you about what they were actually afraid of losing?
3. In verse 5 Moses stops short of an answer he had the power to give, and waits on God for it instead. What is one decision you are currently working out on your own that you have never actually put to God?
4. Compare what the sisters ask for in verse 4 with what God grants in verse 7. What is different about God’s answer?
5. Verse 13 tells Moses he is about to die, and verse 15 records what he said next. What is missing from his response, and what does its absence tell you about him?
6. Verse 20 transfers only part of Moses’ authority, and verse 21 places Joshua under the priest’s counsel. Why would God appoint a new leader and fence him in at the same time?
7. Read Matthew 9:36 beside Numbers 27:17. What did Moses ask God for, and what did God finally send?

Frequently Asked Questions

Numbers 27, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference. You can also open it at Numbers 27 on BibleGateway.

1 Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph: and these are the names of his daughters; Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah.

2 And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying,

3 Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons.

4 Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father.

5 And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.

6 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

7 The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.

8 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.

9 And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren.

10 And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father’s brethren.

11 And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses.

12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel.

13 And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered.

14 For ye rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the water before their eyes: that is the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.

15 And Moses spake unto the LORD, saying,

16 Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation,

17 Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd.

18 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him;

19 And set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight.

20 And thou shalt put some of thine honour upon him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient.

21 And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the LORD: at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.

22 And Moses did as the LORD commanded him: and he took Joshua, and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation:

23 And he laid his hands upon him, and gave him a charge, as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses.