Or HaChaim on Numbers 27:3/אור החיים על במדבר כ״ז:ג׳

1 אבינו מת במדבר, "our father died in the desert, etc." The reason they said: "in the desert," was to emphasise that he did not die in Egypt because he was not worthy of the redemption. They wanted to establish immediately that their claim was based not only according to the opinion that the people who participated in the Exodus inherited the land but also according to the view of those who held that those present at the last census would inherit the land. Concerning those who held that the decisive factor was participation in the Exodus, they said that their father died in the desert, i.e. after the Exodus. By using the word במדבר, they also implied that he was amongst those whose death in the desert had been decreed by G'd as a result of the debacle with the spies when G'd had said (Numbers 14,29) "your carcasses will fall in the desert." This teaches that a) he had been over twenty years old at the time of the Exodus, and b) that he had not died as a result of a specific sin which carries the death penalty. According to those who held that the land was distributed in accordance with the people who participated in the latest census, they hinted that even those opinions were based on the inheritance first "returning" to the previous generation who had participated in the Exodus and that as a result they would be entitled to participate in the distribution.

2Furthermore, according to Zohar volume 2 page 157 where we were told that the desert was the domain of Samael/Satan and this was the reason people who committed sins were punished promptly, they indicated that had their father committed his particular sin in any place other than the desert his punishment would have been delayed giving him a chance to rehabilitate himself in time. In other words, they said that the only reason he died prematurely was that he was in the desert at the wrong time.

3Another way at looking at the word במדבר is to recall that the root of the word is דבר, speak. The daughters wanted to convince Moses that they harboured no enmity against him seeing that it was public knowledge that their father had spoken out publicly against G'd and Moses. This is why G'd had killed him; it was therefore quite impossible to imagine that they, the daughters, would hold Moses responsible for their father's death and would be afraid that he in turn might be prejudiced against them in their demand to share in the land distribution. As proof that their father's sin had not been that of the people who had followed the majority report of the spies, they stated outright that he had not died as part of the עדה, the ten spies whom G'd had described as an "evil congregation" in Numbers 14,27. According to Sifri the term עדה רעה also included the people reported as complaining in Numbers chapter 11, as well as the supporters of Korach. Tzelofchod had not been one of any of these, the daughters said. They emphasised that בחטאו מת, that their father had died on account of his individual sin, not connected to any of the instances of communal disobedience against Moses' leadership. Perhaps this is the reason they insisted on saying what they had to say in the presence of the princes and the congregation. They wanted to show that they fully relied on Moses to judge their case truthfully, without prejudice. This is why they said the word לאמור before commencing their speech. The word לאמור refers to someone saying something. The daughters indicated that their father's sin consisted of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person although apart from this one grievous mistake he was perfectly righteous.

4If we follow this approach we can also solve a difficulty raised by Tossaphot in Baba Batra 118 commencing with the words ולמאן דאמר לבאי הארץ. Tossaphot ask that from the discussion in the Talmud it emerges that according to the view that the primary claimants to distribution of the land were the people who had been counted in the present census, the daughters of Tzelofchod did not receive the share that their father was entitled to in his own right, but they received only the part which their father had claimed being the firstborn son of Chefer. If so, ask Tossaphot, what was the meaning of: "he died because of his own sin," seeing his sin or his death was not relevant to their claim? After all, even the sons of the ten spies who had died at the hands of G'd all inherited on the basis of their grandfathers' claim! According to our approach, however, there was a good reason for what these daughters of Tzelofchod said. They had to emphasise that their father's situation had been different from that of all the other people who had been described as an evil congregation. If you do not accept our approach one may answer the question raised by Tossaphot by saying that the daughters were not aware that the penalty suffered by the spies did not include that their sons could not stake a claim based on their grandfathers' entitlement. They had thought that with the death of these ten spies both their own as well as their sons' claim to any share in the land had expired. This is why they had to make the point that their father's sin did not fall into such a category.

5ובנים לא היו לו. "He never had any sons." They did not say אין לו, "he does not have (or he will not have)." This is best explained according to the view expressed in Yevamot 62 that grandsons are equivalent to sons." They applied this principle also to granddaughters and that is why they had to be careful with phrasing the reference to Tzelofchod not having sons in the past tense only. They did not preclude that he would have grandsons in the future, the ones which his daughters would bear and who would also be known as "his sons."