Bible Commentaries
Numbers 36

Verses 1-13

The question of the inheritance of women, which had already occurred through the application of the daughters of Zelophehad, came up once more, raised by the heads of the tribes. It was possible that these women might marry men who were members of other tribes. In such case their inheritance would pass over. It was therefore provided that they must marry only within the border of their own tribe.

Thus closes the Book of Numbers. It is essentially a book of the wilderness. The nation was on the eve of entering the land. The actual history is again taken up in the last chapter of Deuteronomy with the account of the death of Moses.

It is impossible to read this book without being impressed first with the failure of the people. It is a record of long-continued stubbornness and foolishness.

Yet what right have we to think or speak harshly of the people, for the book is also the story of the unwearying patience and perpetual faithfulness of God.

Throughout there is manifest the forward movement of God along the highway of His own purpose. This forward movement is not of man but of Jehovah. The book is a revelation of the sure procedure of God toward the final working out into human history of the regeneration of humanity, the first movements of which were recorded in the close of the Book of Genesis, the central forces of which came in the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the final victories of which are not yet.