בנחלה בגורל, if a tribe would occupy land belonging to that of another tribe the purpose of sharing out the land by lottery would not have been carried out. [the Torah speaks of the daughters of Tzelofchod possibly marrying out of their tribe and their ancestral heritage therefore becoming part of another tribe, that of their husbands. Ed.]

ואם יהיה היובל...יגרע נחלתן, even in the event that we will not now conquer the whole land, as predicted in Exodus 23,30 that the land would be conquered in stages, progressively, so that each tribe would have to conquer the area it laid claim to, a person who had sold his share or potential share could not claim exemption form the war of conquest seeing that the land he had sold would be restored to him in the Jubilee year. In any event it would remain part of his tribe’s ancestral heritage. However, the share given to the daughters of Tzelofchod which would not be restored to their tribe in the Jubilee year, would furnish an excuse to members of their tribe not to bother to fight for that piece of land, and they would allow the present owners to remain there. At any rate, the argument of the family of Machir of Menashe was that the most recent legislation could result in the whole principle of sharing out the land by lottery being partially aborted.

כן עשו במות צלפחד, they endeavoured to conform to the will of their Creator, כאשר צוה את משה, not because these husbands were the ones they would have chosen had they been allowed unrestricted choice.

ממשפחות בני מנשה, seeing that they had realised that it was G’d’s will that the land should not be transferred from one tribe to another, even though He had given permission for them to choose a husband from any family of their tribe in accordance with their wishes, they chose the sons of their uncles over other families of their tribe as these were more closely related to them ותהי נחלתן על מטה משפחת אביהן, so that there was no transfer of any land to another tribe by reason of their marriages. In fact, no land was reassigned to another family within the same tribe.