You shall take one chief from every tribe to divide the land for inheritance.
And ye shall take one prince out of every tribe,.... That is, out of the nine tribes and the half, which are ten in all; of the tribes of Reuben and Gad none were taken, because they had had their inheritance granted them elsewhere; nor of the tribe of Levi, because they were to have no inheritance in the land: to divide the land by...
And ye shall take one prince of every tribe, to divide the land by inheritance. (f) One of the heads or chief men of every tribe.
The Lord appoints Eleazar and Joshua to lead the distribution, with a prince from each of the ten tribes, Reuben and Gad are excluded since they received their inheritance east of Jordan. These princes are heads of fathers' houses, not tribal heads, and only Caleb is known to us by name from Scripture; the rest appear nowhere else. The listing follows the geography of Canaan from south to north, not the order in which the lots were actually drawn.
AI summary
Commenting on Numbers 34:16-29