36, 7 ולא תסוב נחלה, “an inheritance shall not make the rounds.” Our sages state that this decree applied only during the first generation of the settlers to whom the land had been allocated. Nachmanides writes that what the verse teaches is that if anyone who qualifies for a share in the land on the day this legislation was published dies before he has a chance to physically take possession of his share of the land, and he left a daughter who is qualified to inherit his share of the land, she is not to marry a member of another tribe, in order that her father’s share will not eventually wind up as part of the holdings of her husband’s tribe. Once the physical distribution of the land had been completed, however, such a daughter is free to marry males from any other tribe. The reason is that by that time her original inheritance being a piece of land belonging to her father’s tribe is a well known fact which prevents a land grab by a member of another tribe. Seeing that at the time this legislation was published the exact date of when the distribution would occur had not been known, the legislation is written as if it applied to the entire generation. According to the plain meaning of the text the words ולא תסוב נחלה are not to be understood as providing a rationale for this legislation, i.e. that this legislation is designed to prevent the swapping of ancestral land, but we are dealing here with two separate commandments, each part of the laws of inheritance. 1) Girls inheriting the father’s estate are not to marry outside their tribe. 2) Women, who were daughters of fathers that had no male issue, and were married prior to the publication of this legislation, and who will inherit their father’s share of the land when the time came for distribution, cannot transfer by inheritance or other device their father’s share, but must allow such share upon their death to be inherited by the nearest relatives of their father’s tribe. The immediate application of this legislation was designed to solve the problem of the daughters of Tzelofchod, but they were only the role model for applying this legislation in the future. In other words, in the future this basic condition of ancestral lands remaining non-transferable to other tribes is valid even for women who had already been married when they became heirs to such land. If their sons who were members of their father’s tribe did not belong to the same tribe as their mother’s inheritance, they could not claim this land.