Not, as the people, did Eleazar the Pontiff merely watch that election, and approve [it] in some [loose] manner: but first he approved [it] by that priestly authority [of his], and held [it] ratified. Then he received the veneration and obedience — from Joshua standing [before him] — gravely and—
(col. 236)
—modestly admitted [it]. He sits, as the thing itself seems to intimate, in the priestly chair, which is also called the [chair] of Moses (Matt. [23:2]). Thirdly, [Joshua] learned the manner of thenceforth creating other Princes, should occasion ever bring [it] — [a manner] which he himself would keep, and would prescribe to future Priests. [Just] as Moses himself adorned Aaron with the Pontifical vestments (Lev. 8), and, when he [Aaron] was dying, [adorned] this his son Eleazar (Num. 20), so that thereafter the successors might retain the manner they had seen: so in this place Eleazar looked on — how the designated Prince is brought into the sight of the people, [how] Moses would lay hands on him, give him the precepts, [and] present [him] to the Priest — that likewise afterward he himself, and his posterity, might do the same. For a certain formula, and exemplar, of creating Princes is here shown. Fourthly and lastly, [Joshua] learned how, with the highest authority, he might tell and command the Prince what should be done. “For the fact that obedience is enjoined on the Prince himself signifies that the faculty of commanding is reserved to the Pontiff,” says Cajetan.
So, therefore, was Joshua constituted Leader of the Israelites — and, as in the [chronicle] of the Samaritans (cited by Scaliger, Isagogic Canons bk. 3, p. 218), he is called the first King: the first, I say, in the promised land, [once it was] conquered, distributed, and pacified; about whom [it is said], in the Yuḥasin [Sefer Yuḥasin] fol. 10, 51, 158 — where, among other things, it is said [that] the face of Moses was as the Sun, [that] of Joshua as the Moon (fol. 51) — as Rabbi Abraham Zacutus narrates, concerning Rabbi Eliezer son of Hyrcanus, whose chapters I have several times cited before, and shall cite afterward.