במדבר, פרק ל״ו, פסוק ב׳

The leaders of the tribe of Manasseh present Moses with a profound legal and spiritual dilemma regarding the upcoming division of the land. Their concern arises from an apparent contradiction between two different divine instructions [ביאור שטיינזלץ]. The first instruction outlines the general division of the territory for the Israelite men. This directive was initiated by God [רש ר הירש] as a future plan, intended to be carried out by Joshua and Eleazar only after the nation entered the land [העמק דבר].

This general division involved two distinct stages: a lottery and an inheritance. The lottery was designed to establish the general district and borders for each tribe. Because the Land of Israel is holy, its distribution could not be handled like a standard inheritance where family members simply reach a mutual agreement. Instead, it required direct divine intervention, which established absolute tribal boundaries that could never be altered [העמק דבר]. Following the lottery, the second stage involved the internal division of that district among the members of the tribe based on their population [מלבי״ם]. The very nature of this inheritance dictated that the estate must remain strictly within the family and tribe, flowing naturally to future generations like a continuous stream [רש ר הירש].

However, a second instruction regarding the daughters of Zelophehad created a complication. Unlike the general division, this specific command came as a result of Moses directly asking God [רש ר הירש]. Furthermore, the grant given to these women was not a future promise but an immediate transfer of property, similar to the lands already given to the tribes of Gad and Reuben east of the Jordan River [העמק דבר]. The tribal leaders recognized the inevitable collision between these two directives. If the daughters of Zelophehad were to marry men from a different tribe, their newly acquired land would eventually transfer to the tribe of their husbands. Such a shift would completely uproot the original intent of the land distribution. The divine lottery that set the exact tribal borders would lose its reliability if portions of one tribe's territory were absorbed by another [ספורנו], ultimately violating the fundamental principle that an inheritance must remain permanently within its original tribal borders [רש ר הירש].