This week’s section of Numbers (25:10-30:1) sees the people preparing to figure out the appropriate shares of their future lands. Remember, this is a community in which land is the means to freedom, independence, and survival. Without land, the people would be forced to find employment with others or face indenture or slavery again. While some might have the skills to set up independently, and while the Levites will be taken care of from the portions set aside for the Holy, for the greater numbers of peoples, a share in a free future means access to land. Surprisingly, in the middle of this portioning we meet the petition of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, Zelophehad’s daughters. Zelophehad has died in the wilderness and left no son to inherit. His daughters petition for a fair share for their family. And the Holy agrees, that is what would be just.
In a culture where few are bound by the laws of primogeniture and women inherit wealth, lands, debts, and businesses regularly, it might be a challenge to pause for a moment and consider what principles are set forward in saying yes, Tirzah, Hoglah, Noah, Milcah and Mahlah are to be given a fair share to make a livelihood for their family. Without a share, these free people would have to find employment with others, or face indenture or slavery, or forced marriages in order to survive. A fair share is part of the conditions of trying to be free people.
That leads us to consideration of how inequities can be inherited and even multiply. Just as great fortunes can be inherited and multiplied to massive wealth, lack of opportunity and its consequences also can be inherited and multiplied. Laws and policies both might contribute. The call at the end of American slavery for 40 acres and a mule, drawn from the confiscated plantations that had exploited those 3.9 million enslaved people and their ancestors, would have dramatically changed the United States and race relations. General Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 did divide confiscated sea island plantations into 40 acres shares for newly freed families. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. teaches us, the originators of the that idea were African American clergy who met with Sherman. After 40,000 acres had been claimed, in 1865 President Andrew Johnson overturned the order and returned the land to the previous plantation owners, undoing a share of what would have radically improved the lives of the newly freed people. Once that was done, the sharecropping system expanded, indenturing many more freed people, not uncommonly, to the same land owners who had previously owned their family members. The struggle for equality was made exponentially harder by first making it more difficult to have equity, a share, in the wealth that made America.
Imagine the formerly enslaved Israelites without land. Without land, the foundation of wealth in agricultural societies, they were at a distinct disadvantage compared to the people who did have land. Without land, they were at risk in another time of famine, of becoming enslaved again as they did when they went into Egypt. That is why Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah are granted a fair share, a chance to ensure their family can stay free.
When we speak about reparations for slavery today, it is because of the truth that the American economy and much wealth was created on the backs of those enslaved people. Because of President Johnson’s decision, those people were denied a fair share to start their new lives as free people. Inherited inequities and disadvantages can multiply, just as inherited wealth can, until we start to ascribe certain traits to some people and not to others in the language of meritocracy, when in truth there was no equitable playing field for folks. Zip code matters tremendously for educational opportunity. Land and where you live still very much matters. A fair share recognizes that for free people to have a just opportunity to excel in life, all must have access to the means to create enoughness to care for their families and provide for the future.
When we speak about whether asylum seekers should have any assistance in settling, or folks who have struggled with hard times have any support in trying to live a decent life, we are speaking about offering each other a fair share in our lives together, an entry, a welcome, a chance to do with our differing gifts what we can for the good of all. The hard-heartedness that denies access to equitable opportunity, which might include, for example, quality childcare while folks go to work or more funds to schools where property values are lower is not how we are called to be. We are called to advocate for justice, for a fair share here and now, which means assisting the vulnerable and dispossessed and recognizing their claims for a part of what’s needed to thrive as legitimate, fair, and blessed.
