# 14 Bible Verses About Daughters Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-daughters/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2024-05-24 Updated: 2026-09-28 The Bible speaks of daughters as a blessing to pray for, as heirs whose claim the law upholds, and as members of God's family. "You will be my sons and daughters," Paul quotes God as saying in 2 Corinthians 6:18. Jesus called a woman he had healed "Daughter" (Luke 8:48). David prays for daughters "like pillars carved to adorn a palace" (Psalm 144:12). The five daughters of Zelophehad won their father's land (Numbers 27:1-7), and Job gave his daughters an inheritance with their brothers (Job 42:15). Scripture also records daughters in hard stories, among them Dinah (Genesis 34) and the daughter of Jephthah (Judges 11), and sets a law protecting daughters from their own fathers (Leviticus 19:29). ## Daughters in creation, in God's family and in prayer ### Genesis 1:27 > "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." **Reflection:** The creation account places male and female together in the image of God, in the same sentence and with the same verb, created. The next verse gives the blessing and the charge to both at once: "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.'" ### 2 Corinthians 6:18 > "And, 'I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.'" **Reflection:** Paul strings together Old Testament promises to tell the church in Corinth that it is "the temple of the living God" (verse 16). The promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:14 reads "I will be his father, and he will be my son"; the wording Paul gives includes daughters, as Isaiah 43:6 does when God says "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth." ### Psalm 144:12 > "Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace." **Reflection:** The psalm is headed "Of David" and opens with praise to God, "who trains my hands for war" (verse 1); the prayer for rescue begins at verse 5, "Part your heavens, Lord, and come down." After asking to be delivered "from the hands of foreigners" (verse 11), David describes the peace that would follow: healthy sons, daughters like carved palace pillars, full barns and "no cry of distress in our streets" (verse 14). ## Daughters who inherit ### Numbers 27:1-7 > "The daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, belonged to the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milkah and Tirzah. They came forward and stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders and the whole assembly at the entrance to the tent of meeting and said, 'Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among Korah's followers, who banded together against the Lord, but he died for his own sin and left no sons. Why should our father's name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father's relatives.' So Moses brought their case before the Lord, and the Lord said to him, 'What Zelophehad's daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father's relatives and give their father's inheritance to them.'" **Reflection:** Zelophehad died in the wilderness with five daughters and no sons, and his daughters came before Moses, the priest and the whole assembly asking, "Why should our father's name disappear from his clan because he had no son?" Moses took the case to the Lord, who answered, "What Zelophehad's daughters are saying is right." The verses that follow make the ruling a law for every Israelite family, and Joshua 17:3-4 records the daughters receiving their land. ### Job 42:15 > "Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers." **Reflection:** At the end of the book Job has seven sons and three daughters, and only the daughters are named: Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch (verse 14). Their father gave them "an inheritance along with their brothers", where the law of Numbers 27 gave daughters land only when there was no son. ## Teaching and protecting children ### Leviticus 19:29 > "Do not degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness." **Reflection:** The command belongs to the holiness code that opens "Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy" (verse 2). It forbids a father to degrade his daughter by making her a prostitute and gives a reason beyond the family: the whole land would be "filled with wickedness." ### Deuteronomy 6:6-7 > "These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." **Reflection:** These lines follow the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (verse 4), and the command to love God with heart, soul and strength. Moses tells Israel to impress those words on their children at home, on the road, at bedtime and on waking. ### Ephesians 6:4 > "Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." **Reflection:** Paul first tells children to obey their parents and quotes the commandment "Honor your father and mother" (verses 1-3). He then addresses fathers directly, with a limit on their authority ("do not exasperate your children") and a task, to bring the children up "in the training and instruction of the Lord." ## Daughters in the Old Testament stories ### Ruth 1:16-17 > "But Ruth replied, 'Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.'" **Reflection:** Ruth was Naomi's daughter-in-law, and Naomi first tells her and Orpah to go back "to your mother's home" (verse 8), then three times calls them "my daughters" as she urges them to return (verses 11-13). Orpah goes; Ruth answers with this vow, binding herself to Naomi's people, Naomi's God and even Naomi's burial place. ### Judges 11:34-35 > "When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, 'Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.'" **Reflection:** Before the battle with the Ammonites, Jephthah vowed to sacrifice as a burnt offering "whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me" (verse 31), and his only child came out dancing. She told him to keep his word and asked for two months to weep with her friends "because I will never marry" (verse 37). The chapter says he "did to her as he had vowed" and that the young women of Israel went out four days each year to commemorate her (verses 39-40). ### Genesis 34:3-4 > "His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob; he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. And Shechem said to his father Hamor, 'Get me this girl as my wife.'" **Reflection:** The verse before this one says that Shechem "took her and raped her" (verse 2); only after that does the text describe his attachment to Dinah and his demand to marry her. Jacob does nothing about it until his sons come home, and two of her brothers, Simeon and Levi, kill every male in Shechem's city. Their reply to Jacob ends the chapter: "Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?" (verse 31). ## Daughters in the Gospels and Acts ### Luke 8:48 > "Then he said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.'" **Reflection:** A woman who had bled for twelve years touched Jesus' cloak in the crowd and was healed; when she came forward trembling, Jesus called her "Daughter." He was on his way to the house of Jairus, whose "only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying" (verse 42). Before Jesus arrived she had died, and he took her by the hand and said, "My child, get up!" (verse 54). ### Luke 12:53 > "They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." **Reflection:** Jesus says he came to bring division, not peace, and the division he describes runs through a single household: "five in one family divided against each other" (verse 52). The pairs echo Micah 7:6, where "a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." ### Acts 21:8-9 > "Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied." **Reflection:** Luke, travelling with Paul, records staying in Caesarea with Philip the evangelist, one of the seven chosen in Acts 6, who had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. Luke gives neither their names nor any of their words; the prophecy he records in full is from Agabus, who warned that Paul would be bound in Jerusalem (verses 10-11). ## Praying for a daughter, and two stories left without a verdict Psalm 144 is addressed to God from verse 5 onward, so verse 12 can be prayed for a daughter as written, together with the blessings on the household in verses 13-15. Judges 11 records Jephthah's vow and what he did to his daughter without passing judgment on the vow; the chapter ends with the young women of Israel commemorating her four days each year. Genesis 34 ends on her brothers' question about Dinah, and Jacob's judgment on Simeon and Levi comes later, in Genesis 49:7: "Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel!" --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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