You shall take one leader of every tribe, to divide the land for inheritance: In addition to Eleazar and Joshua, there must also be one leader from each of the nine and one-half tribes to oversee the division of the land. Although Moses is in focus as the leader whom God is addressing, the Hebrew pronoun for You is plural, referring to the Israelites. As in 1.16 (see the comments there), the Hebrew word for leader is nasiʾ, which refers to a prominent and distinguished leader, for example, a much respected sheikh of a tribe; thus leader seems a rather flat translation. A better rendering in English is “chief” (Revised English Bible) or “chieftain” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). For the Hebrew verb rendered divide … for inheritance (nachal), see the previous verse.

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .