פירוש על במדבר 27:5

ויקרב משה את משפטן AND MOSES BROUGHT THEIR CAUSE [BEFORE THE LORD] — The law on this subject escaped him (Sanhedrin 8a). Here he received punishment because he had assumed a “crown” (he had set himself up as the supreme judge) by saying, (Deuteronomy 1:17) “And the cause that is too hard for you ye shall bring to me”. Another explanation: This chapter ought to have been written by Moses (i.e., like most laws in the Torah it should have been spoken to the people by Moses without his having waited until some incident made its promulgation necessary), but for the fact that the daughters of Zelophehad had so much merit, it was therefore written through them (it was their complaint which gave occasion for stating it) (Bava Batra 119a; Sanhedrin 8a).

ויקרב משה את משפטן לפני השם, "Moses submitted their claim for G'd to adjudge." It is possible, that Moses used the last mentioned arguments of these daughters and wanted to know from G'd if to treat these girls as the missing sons or if to treat their mother as a potential candidate for some kind of levirate marriage in order to preserve the name of their father. Moses hoped that in the event G'd would deny them an inheritance, He would at the same time give him a reason why the principle underlying the levirate marriage legislation did not apply to them, i.e. why their mother could not marry a brother-in-law and the son born from such a marriage would inherit Tzelofchod's or Chefer's inheritance.