“ Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family, because he had no son? Give to us a possession among the brethren of our father.”
Now if he had had a son that son would have received his portion in Gilead and Bashan. No one would have argued. He would also have maintained the name of the family in the clan and in Israel. Furthermore he would have seen to the marriage settlements for the girls, so that they could make good marriages. They would not have had to be married empty handed. But by his death without a male heir it was being suggested that this would not now happen. Not only would no land be attached to his name, but his daughters would in fact lose out greatly. For the fact that he had had no son would result in no land being allocated to his immediate family as a result of their victories. His name would therefore be lost, having no land for it to be attached to, and his daughters would be bereft of the support that he had deserved. The head of a related family would, of course be expected to take them under his wing, but they would go there as dependants and suppliants with no property. What they wanted was to ensure that their deceased father would posthumously receive an allocation of land, which would then be passed on to them so that they could take it with them as dowry, with his name permanently attached to the land so that he was remembered for ever.
There are a number of examples elsewhere, where men who married women who owned land became members of the woman's tribe, so vitally was the name of the tribe and the family connected with the land. See, for example, the case of Jarha, who belonged to pre-Mosaic times and is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2:34-35. It would explain the introduction of Jair among the Manassites in Numbers 32:41; Deuteronomy 3:14. His father Segub was the son of Hezron of the tribe of Judah, but his mother was the daughter of Machir the Manassite (1 Chronicles 2:21-22). Another example is found in Ezra 2:61; Nehemiah 7:63, where the sons of a priest who had married one of the daughters of Barzillai the rich Gileadite, were called ‘sons of Barzillai'.
But as we shall see later the leaders of Manasseh were concerned that if these young women received land in their father's name, they married within the clan so that the land might be preserved to Manasseh, and this they gladly agreed to do The story would have a happy ending. A good note on which to end the book (Numbers 36:1-12).
This suggests that after the conquest when land was passed on it still retained its attachment to the family name of the original recipient throughout the generations. This was why the prophets were so angry at those who took advantage of bad times to add land to land, thus blotting out the memory of the land's original owner for ever. It was a crime against the memory of Israel.