14:2a
Their inheritance was assigned by lot: It was the role of the priest to throw the lots. God used the lots to show which piece of land he would give to each family.
Here is another way to translate this clause:
Eleazar threw stones to decide which piece of land each family would receive.
inheritance: This word was used in 11:23 and you should translate it the same way in both places.
lot: The Hebrew word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as lot refers to small objects that the Israelite people threw to determine God’s will. It is possible that the lots were stones with a different color on each side. If you have a tradition of choosing or throwing small objects to make a decision, you can use that term here. Or you can use some other term that is familiar in your language for choosing by chance.
Here are some ways to translate this term:
throw dice
-or-
draw straws
14:2b
for the nine and a half tribes: The nine and a half tribes included all the tribes except for Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. They received land on the east side of the Jordan River.
Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:
for the ⌊remaining⌋ nine and one-half tribes
-or-
for the nine and a half tribes ⌊that hadn’t yet received their inheritance⌋
14:2c
as the LORD had commanded through Moses: Numbers 33:50-54 tells the story of how Yahweh commanded Moses to distribute the land on the west side of the Jordan River.
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