John Calvin Commentary Joshua 18:4

"Appoint for you three men of each tribe: and I will send them, and they shall arise, and walk through the land, and describe it according to their inheritance; and they shall come unto me." — Joshua 18:4 (ASV)

Give out from among you three men, etc. Caleb and Joshua had already surveyed those regions, and the people had learned much by inquiry. Joshua, however, wishes the land to be divided as if according to actual survey and orders three surveyors to be appointed for each of the seven tribes, so that by the testimony of two or three persons every dispute may be settled.

But nothing seems more incongruous than to send twenty-one men, who were not only to pass directly through a hostile country but also to trace it through all its various windings and turnings, so as not to leave a single corner unexamined, to calculate its length and breadth, and even make due allowance for its inequalities.

Every person whom they happened to meet must readily have suspected who they were and for what reason they had been employed on this expedition. In short, no free return lay open for them except through a thousand deaths. Assuredly, they would not have encountered so much danger from blind and irrational impulse, nor would Joshua have exposed them to such manifest danger, had they not been aware that all those nations, struck with terror from heaven, desired nothing so much as peace.

For although they hated the children of Israel, still, having been subdued by so many defeats, they did not dare to move a finger against them. Thus, the surveyors proceeded in safety as if through a peaceful territory, under the pretext either of trading or, at least, of making a harmless visit.

It is also possible that they arranged themselves in different parties and thus made the journey more secretly. It is certain, indeed, that there was only one source from which they could have derived all this courage and confidence: trusting under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty, and thus having no fear of blind and foolish men.

Hence the praise here bestowed on their ready will. For had they not been persuaded that the hands of those nations were tied up by supernal power, they would have had a just and honest cause for refusing.