Numbers 36:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Let them marry to whom they think best, &c.— The Lord, being pleased to approve by Moses the prudence of this representation, ordered, that the daughters should be permitted to have their choice in marriage among those who were descended from the same stock: only with these two limitations, that they might not marry a man of another tribe, nor a man of another family in their own tribe; and, accordingly, they did actually marry their cousins german. See the learned Remarks of Grotius upon this subject in his Notes on Matthew 1:16. This law was made for the preservation of families as well as tribes, and was also the ground of the law which commanded a man to marry the wife of his brother who left no issue. Deuteronomy 25:5-6. See Ruth 4:6. Plato took nearly the same measures for the preservation of families. He ordered that every heiress should marry her nearest of kin; De Leg. lib. 2: p. 924. There was a law, too, among the Athenians nearly similar. It ran thus: "Virgins, possessed of an inheritance, are not to marry out of their own kindred; it being equitable that they should bestow themselves, with their goods, upon him who is nearest to them by birth:" and the reason is the same with that given in the law of Moses, that the house and fortune of the deceased ought to remain in the family. But in case a man died intestate, his estate went to his daughter's husband if he left no sons; and thus it might pass into another family, as appears from the titles of the same laws. See Petit, de Leg. Att. as before. The particular law, respecting Zelophehad's daughters, is passed into a general law for heiresses in Numbers 36:8.; for it should be remembered, that the case concerned no other women than those who were heiresses.