And with you there shall be a man of every tribe; every one head of the house of his fathers.

And there shall be with you the princes of the tribes, and of the houses in their kindreds,

and with you there is a man for a tribe, each is a head to the house of his fathers.

And to give you help, take one man from every tribe, the head of his father's house.

And there shall be with you the leaders of the tribes, as well as of the houses, in their kinships,

Sintque vobiseum viri de singulis tribubus, quorum quilibet caput domus sit patrum suorum.

And with you there shall be a (c) man of every tribe; every one head of the house of his fathers.
(c) That is, the chiefest man of every tribe.

And with you there shall be a man of every tribe,.... Excepting Levi, of which Moses and Aaron were, to assist in taking the account, and to see that it was an exact and perfect one:
everyone head of the house of his fathers; and prince of the tribe he belonged to, as appears from Numbers 1:16 and Numbers 7:2, where an account is given of the same persons as princes of the tribes that offered at the dedication of the altar, who here assisted in the taking this account; the Targum of Jonathan calls them each a prince, as Prince Elizur, &c.

with you there shall be a man of every tribe, &c.--The social condition of the Israelites in the wilderness bore a close resemblance to that of the nomad tribes of the East in the present day. The head of the tribe was a hereditary dignity, vested in the oldest son or some other to whom the right of primogeniture was transferred, and under whom were other inferior heads, also hereditary, among the different branches of the tribe. The Israelites being divided into twelve tribes, there were twelve chiefs appointed to assist in taking the census of the people.

Moses and Aaron, who were commanded to number, or rather to muster, the people, were to have with them "a man of every tribe, who was head-man of his fathers' houses," i.e., a tribe-prince, viz., to help them to carry out the mustering. Beth aboth ("fathers' houses"), in Numbers 1:2, is a technical expression for the subdivisions in which the mishpachoth, or families of the tribes, were arranged, and is applied in Numbers 1:4 according to its original usage, based upon the natural division of the tribes into mishpachoth and families, to the fathers' houses which every tribe possessed in the family of its first-born. In Numbers 1:5-15, these heads of tribes were mentioned by name, as in Numbers 2:3., Numbers 7:12., Numbers 10:14. In Numbers 1:16 they are designated as "called men of the congregation," because they were called to diets of the congregation, as representatives of the tribes, to regulate the affairs of the nation; also "princes of the tribes of their fathers," and "heads of the thousands of Israel:" "prince," from the nobility of their birth; and "heads," as chiefs of the alaphim composing the tribes. Alaphim is equivalent to mishpachoth (cf. Numbers 10:4; Joshua 22:14); because the number of heads of families in the mishpachoth of a tribe might easily amount to a thousand (see at Exodus 18:25). In a similar manner, the term "hundred" in the old German came to be used in several different senses (see Grimm, deutsche Rechts-alterthmer, p. 532).