Cozbi daughter of Zur; he was the tribal head of an ancestral house in Midian (25:15). As related at the end of the last parashah, Phinehas the priest killed Cozbi and her Israelite lover, Zimri, at Shittim (25:6–9). Some traditions portray the highly born Cozbi as the innocent victim of her father’s hatred for Israel. According to Midrash B’midbar Rabbah 21.3, Zur was so eager to ensnare the Israelites in sin (Numbers 25:1–5) that he sacrificed his own daughter, a princess, to harlotry. B’midbar Rabbah 20.24 relates that Zur had instructed Cozbi to have relations with no one but Moses, but Zimri convinced her that he was even higher in rank.
BT Sanhedrin 82a, discussing consequences for men who have sexual relations with non-Jewish women, denigrates Cozbi, a reflection of the considerable sexual anxiety the Rabbis harbored about the attractions of foreign women. Cozbi’s name is linked to kazav, the Hebrew word for “falsehood,” and she is castigated in the coarsest terms as a common prostitute.
This passage about Cozbi also reveals the serious problems raised for rabbinic commentators by Moses’ passivity in the face of the events at Shittim and by Phinehas’s extreme zealotry. The Rabbis explain that Zimri justified his relationship with Cozbi to Moses and the elders of Israel on the grounds that Moses had also taken a foreign consort, the Midianite Zipporah. Moses was rendered speechless by this challenge, and his great-nephew, the fervent Phinehas, had to remind him of the prohibition against cohabitation with foreign women, a law that Moses himself had taught the people when he descended from Mount Sinai. B’midbar Rabbah 20.24 describes how Moses’ failure to act at this moment of crisis demoralized all the Israelites except Phinehas and concludes that it was in punishment for this public weakness that Moses was buried in an unknown location. The passage concludes, “This serves to teach you that we must each be as fierce as a leopard, swift as an eagle, fleet as a hart, and strong as a lion in the performance of our Maker’s will.”
The name of Asher’s daughter was Serah (26:46). This statement in the tribal genealogies of Numbers 26 is startling because Serah bat Asher was also mentioned among the seventy family members who accompanied Jacob to Egypt several centuries earlier (Genesis 46:17). The Rabbis transform Serah into the longest-lived individual in midrashic literature and praise her for her wisdom. They attribute her remarkable longevity to the potent blessing that her grandfather Jacob was said to have given her after she informed him through music that Joseph was still alive. BT Sotah 13a relates that it was Serah who later showed Moses where Joseph was buried at the time of the Exodus so that his coffin might be returned to the land of Israel. Midrash B’reishit Rabbah 94.9 identifies her also with the clever woman who negotiated on behalf of her city with David’s general Joab (II Samuel 20:16–22). And Midrash P’sikta D’Rav Kahana 11:13 even imagines the venerable Serah resolving rabbinic disputes about events that she witnessed in biblical times. In medieval writings, Serah is among the nine human beings who are said to have entered heaven alive; according to the Zohar (3:167b), she lives in a heavenly palace and teaches Torah.
The daughters of Zelophehad…came forward (27:1). The Rabbis taught: “When the daughters of Zelophehad heard that the land of Israel was being apportioned among the males of the tribes but not the females, they consulted together as to how to make their claim. They said: ‘The compassion of God is not like human compassion. Human rulers are more concerned with males than with females—but the One who spoke and brought the world into being is not like that. Rather, God shows mercy to every living thing, as Scripture says, Who gives food to all flesh / Whose steadfast love is eternal (Psalm 136:25), and The Sovereign is good to all / God’s mercy is upon all God’s works (Psalm 145:9).”’ This rabbinic midrash from Sifrei B’midbar 133 represents the daughters of Zelophehad as canny and competent women who trusted that divine mercy would transcend the mutable norms of a human society in which women were subordinate beings. According to the Rabbis, these admirable sisters epitomized the females of the wilderness generation who consistently outshone their male contemporaries in their faith in God and their personal courage. B’midbar Rabbah 21.10 relates that women refused to participate in making the Golden Calf; they also rejected the disheartening counsel of the scouts who warned of the dangers of invading Canaan. Similarly, the daughters of Zelophehad are understood to have demonstrated their complete confidence in the ultimate fulfillment of the divine promise when they petition Moses to secure their inheritance in the land of Israel.
BT Bava Batra 119b praises the daughters of Zelophehad in three ways: as intelligent women, since they spoke at an opportune moment; as scriptural exegetes knowledgeable in Jewish law, since they were aware of the legal issues involved in their situation; and as sexually chaste, since they did not marry until their inheritance status was resolved, despite their advanced ages. The rabbinic sages awarded the daughters of Zelophehad this exalted standing among biblical women because they prompted Moses to seek divine help in clarifying the laws of succession of property. Nor did it hurt that God supported the sisters’ claim. According to B’midbar Rabbah 21.11, by expanding the Torah these women earned merit for themselves and for their forebears listed in 27:1—including Joseph, the founder of their tribe. So pious and self-sacrificing were these women that they are said to have humbled Moses himself.
The Rabbis, who sought meaning in every detail of the biblical text, noticed that the order in which the five daughters are named is not always the same. Sifrei B’midbar 133 says that this inconsistency is meant to show that all the women were equal in good qualities. BT Bava Batra 120a speculates that 27:1, where the daughters seek their inheritance, names them according to their wisdom, while 36:10, which describes their marriages, lists them by age—since age takes precedence at a festive gathering.
—Judith R. Baskin