Commentary for Numbers 26:53

לאלה תחלק הארץ TO THESE THE LAND SHALL BE DIVIDED, and not to any who are now less than twenty years old; even though they become included among those who are twenty before the division of the land, — for they were seven years in conquering it and seven years did they take in dividing it — for no one received a portion in the land except these 601,000 and if one of these had six sons, they received only their father’s portion (cf. Bava Batra 117a).

לאלה תחלק הארץ בנחלה, "To these the land will be shared out as an inheritance, etc." On the word לאלה our sages in Baba Batra 117 comment as follows: Rabbi Yoshiah holds that the subject of the word are the people who participated in the Exodus. He bases himself on the additional data in verse 55 לשמות מטות אבותם ינחלו, 'they shall inherit according to the names of the tribes of their fathers.' How do I then fulfil the instruction of the Torah which wrote לאלה, i.e. 'to these' i.e. to people present now at this time? The word is meant to exclude people who were not yet 20 years of age at the time they left Egypt." Rabbi Yonathan holds that the land was distributed only to the people who actually set foot in the land, i.e. the men under the leadership of Joshua. He bases himself on the word לאלה. As to the meaning of the words לשמות מטות אבותם ינחלו, Rabbi Yonathan feels that in this instance the Torah applied yardsticks other than the normal ones to the laws of inheritance. Usually the living inherit the dead; in this instance the dead inherited the living. Thus far the statements of these two scholars.

Even if they reached twenty before the apportioning of the land. Meaning [the verse implies that] you shall apportion the land “among these” 601,730 mentioned above who came to the land of Israel, in accordance with the view of Rabbi Yonasan (Bava Basra 117a). However, [there is a difficulty that] the verse did not need to mention this, given that we would know it from [the verse], “The land shall be apportioned as an inheritance according to the number of names” which comes afterwards, teaching that the land was apportioned to those mentioned above. Thus, what does the Torah mean to teach [by saying] “among these” which implies an exclusion, [i.e.] among these, but not among others. [Rashi answers:] The exclusion is that [the division] was specifically “among these” who were twenty years of age and above, but not others [even if they reached twenty before the apportioning of the land]. Re’m.