Commentaire sur Les Nombres 26:56

על פי הגורל ACCORDING TO (more lit., by the mouth of) THE LOT [SHALL THE POSSESSION BE DIVIDED] — The lot itself spoke as I have already explained; this tells us that the division took place by the Holy Spirit (Midrash Tanchuma, Pinchas 6).

על פי הגורל תחלק נחלתו, when it came to the actual distribution of the land, the result of the lottery confirmed what Joshua had announced as the fair share for each tribe. It was found that the tribes who numbered more people did indeed receive parcels that were larger than those who numbered fewer people.

בין רב למעט, be they numerous or few. We have already referred to the discussion in Baba Batra 122 about how the division was to proceed, if according to the number of individuals or according to the number of tribes, and we have mentioned that in the future the land would be divided between 13 tribes. In addition to that the Talmud stated that the key to the division was the monetary value of a piece of land, not just its size. Rabbi Yehudah adds that the amount of land needed to grow a bushel of wheat in the tribal area of Yehudah was one fifth of the amount of land needed to produce the same amount of wheat in the Galil. Rashbam comments on the words בין רב למעט that every tribe had to accept the piece of land allocated in the general הגרלה, lottery, regardless of whether they thought they ought to have received a larger share due to the number of men over 20 in that tribe, as all the tribes received equal shares. The difficulty with this approach is that there is no need to accept such a simplistic view based on the text seeing we have a Baraitha according to which the words בין רב למעט are understood to refer to the relative distance from Jerusalem of the various parcels of land allocated to the tribes, i.e. that land close to Jerusalem was considered worth more than land which was a long way from Jerusalem. According to the Baraitha the word רב would refer to land close to Jerusalem being worth more.