Joshua 22:14

And with him ten princes. Phinehas represented the tribe of Levi, the high priest being too great to permit of his forming part of such a deputation. The actual head of each tribe accompanied him; that is, the head of the family, as we should call it, in each tribe. This seems preferable to Keil's idea, that some tribes were represented by a prince, and some by heads of families, which seems inadmissible from the fact that the Hebrew states that each tribe was represented in the same manner, אֶחַד נְשִׂיא אֶחַד נְשִׂיא . What is doubtless intended here is to emphasize the weight and importance of the deputation sent with Phinehas, a weight and importance befitting an embassy which might have to announce the determination to exterminate the two and a half tribes as completely as Jericho had been exterminated. The mention of ten princes shows that the cis-Jordanic half tribe of Manasseh was represented. Tribes. The word here, after "father's house," is the genealogical מַטֶּה not the political שֶׁבֶט . The thousands. Or families (as in 6:15 ; 1 Samuel 10:19 ). See however Introduction, p. 29.