Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Numbers 27:3

CHAPTER 27

Nu 27:1-11. The Daughters of Zelophehad Ask for an Inheritance.

3. Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not ... in the company of ... Korah--This declaration might be necessary because his death might have occurred about the time of that rebellion; and especially because, as the children of these conspirators were involved along with their fathers in the awful punishment, their plea appeared the more proper and forcible that their father did not die for any cause that doomed his family to lose their lives or their inheritance.

died in his own sin--that is, by the common law of mortality to which men, through sin, are subject.