Patrilineal & Patrilocal Life in Ancient Israel

The term patrilineal has to do with tracing ancestral descent (and therefore tribal affiliation and inheritance) through the male line. In Israel the possessions of a particular lineage were carefully passed down through the generations, family by family, according to gender and birth order, in order to provide for the family members to come and to preserve “the name” of those gone before.

The genealogies of the Old Testament make this legal structure obvious—women are typically not named. When women are named,…