Manasseh’s son, and the one grandchild of Joseph’s the Genesis narrative bothers to name: ‘the sons of Machir son of Manasseh were also born on Joseph’s knees’ (Genesis 50:23, already on these pages) — the same gesture of legal acknowledgment Jacob used two chapters earlier on Ephraim and Manasseh themselves. ⭐ Numbers 26:29 (already on these pages) adds a detail this chapter depends on: ‘Machir fathered GILEAD’ — a son bearing the very name of the region his own descendants will one day conquer. ⚠ Whether the region was named for the man or the man for the region, the text does not say, and this translation does not decide. Numbers 27:1 (already on these pages) places Zelophehad four generations down this same line (son of Hepher, son of Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh) — so the sisters who won a change in the inheritance law belong to the very clan that wins Gilead by conquest at Numbers 32:39-40. By then ‘the children of Machir’ — the man himself generations gone — take Gilead by force and Moses assigns it to ‘Machir’ by name, the collective standing for the individual the way ‘Israel’ does throughout this book.