Saturday Sisters: Daughters Helping Daddy

  Shallum's daughters worked beside their father on the wall. But women couldn't do that, right?

Could men move these stones?

By Gustav Bauernfeind (1848-1904) - Sotheby's, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11405387

Hypotheses

  Well, maybe they're mentioned because they cooked for Daddy's workers, or some womanly job.
  If that's what is meant, i have to conclude that the men in the other sections did their own cooking, or fasted every workday from the time they began until they went home at night.
 Seems even more unlikely.

  Then again, Shallum was a "ruler" of half Jerusalem. Sometimes "daughters," i am told, would be used for smaller towns that he ruled.
  Maybe.

  But why 

do we need to reach so far to keep the girls in their "proper" sphere?
 Other wall workers are noted as having their sons work beside them.
 And since we know that a family will not necessarily have sons, we can easily consider that Shallum had no sons, and his daughters wanted to work in the place of the nonexistent, or predeceased, sons.

 The purpose of the wall 

was to protect home and family. That sounds rather like Mulan taking her father's place in battle.   
xxRemaining in the cultural setting, this would be exactly the situation in which Zelophehad's daughters found themselves: It's about Daddy, not about me.
Very likely, among their contemporaries as well as commentators, the decision may not have been easily accepted. Maybe Daddy said, oh no you don't, then realized he couldn't deny his girls this, an opportunity to stand up for the communty..



Background and Text of the Book of Nehemiah:
http://biblescripture.net/Nehemiah.html