Numbers 27:4

W hy should the name of our father be done away, cut off, extirpated, and thus destroyed and forgotten, from among his family because he hath no son? Give unto us, therefore, a possession among the brethren of our father. Their petition was that in such circumstances as those in which they found themselves the female heirs could represent and take the place of male. Without being conscious of it, they really demanded an elevation of woman in her social dignity. In the case of the marriage of a daughter into a different tribe the name of her father would have died out among the people, whereas, if their petition Would be granted, a girl could marry a man who would enter upon her possession, the children of such a union preserving the name and continuing the inheritance of the grandfather on the maternal side.