EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)
34:16-29 God here appoints men to divide the land to them. So sure must they feel of victory and success while God fought for them, that the persons are named who should be intrusted with the dividing of the land.
Of the representatives now selected through Moses beforehand, who were all princes, i. e. heads of chief families, in their respective tribes (see
Numbers 13:2), Caleb alone, of the tribe of Judah, is otherwise known to us (see
Numbers 13:4 ff). The order in which the tribes are named is peculiar to this passage. If they be taken in pairs, Judah and Simeon, Benjamin and Dan, Manasseh and Ephraim, Zebulun and Issachar, Asher and Naphtali, the order of the pairs agrees with the order in which the allotments in the Holy land, taken also in couples, followed each other in the map from south to north.
16-29. names of the men … which shall divide the land—This appointment by the Lord before the Jordan tended not only to animate the Israelites faith in the certainty of the conquest, but to prevent all subsequent dispute and discontent, which might have been dangerous in presence of the natives. The nominees were ten princes for the nine and a half tribes, one of them being selected from the western section of Manasseh, and all subordinate to the great military and ecclesiastical chiefs, Joshua and Eleazar. The names are mentioned in the exact order in which the tribes obtained possession of the land, and according to brotherly connection.
No text from Poole on this verse.
And the names of the men are these,.... Which were not left to the tribes to choose, but were nominated by the Lord himself, who best knew their capacities and qualifications for this service:
of the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh: who was one of the two spies that brought a good report of the land, and Joshua is the other; and these were the only two of the spies living, and who are the first that were appointed to this service, of overseeing the division of the land; the rest were all of the new generation, that were sprung up, whose fathers fell in the wilderness, and we know no more of them than their names; and therefore from hence, to the end ofNumbers 34:28, no further remarks are necessary, only that the tribes and the princes are reckoned in a different order than they were at any time before, either at the first numbering of them,Numbers 1:1 or at the offerings for the dedication of the altar,Numbers 7:1 or at the taking the sum of them,Numbers 26:1 even according to the order of their situation in the land of Canaan by their lots, and which Moses did not live to see; and which therefore shows the prescience and predisposing providence of God, and that Moses, as Bishop Patrick observes, was guided by a divine Spirit in all his writings.
The prince of the children of Joseph, for the tribe of the children of Manasseh, Hanniel the son of Ephod.
