When God brought His people into the wilderness, He spoke to them through Moses (Num. 12:6-8a); but Joshua, Moses’ successor, was to receive guidance not from God by His direct speaking but by the Urim and the Thummim on the breastplate worn by Eleazar the priest (see note Exo. 28:301, note Exo. 28:302a, note Exo. 28:303). God’s government among His people was a matter not of autocracy or democracy but of theocracy, carried out through the coordination of the high priest, who received God’s instructions, and the leader, who executed these instructions. After Moses, throughout the generations in the Old Testament the divine government depended on the two persons of the high priest and the leader, the only exception being the time when David served as both the leader and the priest wearing the ephod (1 Sam. 23:9; 30:7). When the children of Israel came back from captivity, a later Joshua was the high priest, and Zerubbabel, a royal descendant, was the leader (Hag. 1:1). See note Deut. 16:181.
At the end of this chapter the children of Israel had become a new people formed into a new army with a new theocracy.