These are the inheritances, which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel, divided for an inheritance by lot in Shiloh before the LORD, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. So they made an end of dividing the country.
These are the inheritances. This verse is the formal close of the section which narrates the history of the land distribution; and to stamp it with due importance, the names of the commissioners are repeated, as well as Shiloh, the then spiritual metropolis of the country. Viewed abstractly from the divine command in which it originated, it was a wise and prudential measure for the prevention of all private disputes and claims of preference to particular localities. Immediately on the conquest of Canaan it was divided by the supreme authority into twelve portions, which were assigned by lot to each of the twelve tribes; and these allocated cantons were again subdivided, so that a piece of land was appropriated to every family in the tribe as their patrimonial possession. It was a military division of the country, a share in the soil being given as a reward to every soldier who had fought for the promised land. But political effects of the highest importance were contemplated by this arrangement; because it was the means of converting a vast horde of nomads at once into a settled nation of peacful and industrious agriculturists. Such a result was secured by one simple law. Instead of introducing a feudal system, dividing the country to military chiefs, for whom the people should labour as serfs, he gave the land to all. Each tribe was marched to its new possession, every family entered on its humble estate, and Israel began its national existence. The miracle was as great as if immense hordes of wandering Bedouins were instantly transformed into quiet farmers ('Bibliotheca Sacra,' April, 1853, p. 358).
Thus, on their first settlement in the land of Canaan, the Israelites exhibited the unparalleled spectacle of a whole nation, comprising a population of upward of two million, all equal in rank, and nearly so in condition. They were universally trained to the cultivation of the soil; and whether Moses inherited his dislike of foreign commerce from the Egyptians, who were proverbial for their hatred of the sea, or his views of the policy best adapted to the character and destinies of the Hebrew people were derived from a higher source of inspiration, their exclusive restriction to rural employments must have produced a beneficial influence on their national character. 'For where the land, as in Judea, is divided at the beginning amidst the whole people, the absence of foreign commerce, although incompatible with any high advancement in knowledge and general cultivation of mind, is not incompatible with a large amount of national virtue and happiness' (Arnold's Miscellaneous Works, 'Essay on the Social Progress of States,' p. 99).