testimony of extraordinary virtue, who should measure the land
faithfully, and without any fallacy or deceit should inform them
of its real magnitude.

21. Now Joshua, when he had thus spoken to them, found that the
multitude approved of his proposal. So he sent men to measure
their country, and sent with them some geometricians, who could
not easily fail of knowing the truth, on account of their skill
in that art. He also gave them a charge to estimate the measure
of that part of the land that was most fruitful, and what was not
so good: for such is the nature of the land of Canaan, that one
may see large plains, and such as are exceeding fit to produce
fruit, which yet, if they were compared to other parts of the
country, might be reckoned exceedingly fruitful; yet, if it be
compared with the fields about Jericho, and to those that belong
to Jerusalem, will appear to be of no account at all; and
although it so falls out that these people have but a very little
of this sort of land, and that it is, for the main, mountainous
also, yet does it not come behind other parts, on account of its
exceeding goodness and beauty; for which reason Joshua thought
the land for the tribes should be divided by estimation of its
goodness, rather than the largeness of its measure, it often
happening that one acre of some sort of land was equivalent to a
thousand other acres. Now the men that were sent, which were in
number ten, traveled all about, and made an estimation of the
land, and in the seventh month came to him to the city of Shiloh,
where they had set up the tabernacle.

22. So Joshua took both Eleazar and the senate, and with them the
heads of the tribes, and distributed the land to the nine tribes,