Question VI. By whom was this response given to Joshua?

“This response,” says Masius, “I certainly esteem [to be] not of these three [tribes] alone, but of all the tribes at once — [tribes] which, through their [own] tribunes, or other men of first authority allotted [delegated] to the Commander, solemnly render to him their command [imperium] and obedience and obsequy.” But indeed long ago all the tribes had solemnly conferred [both] command and obedience upon Joshua — first indeed in a certain degree [quadantenus], Num. 27, after they had seen [him] created Leader by GOD and Moses, and commended with so great effort; and again Deut. 31, when [he came] together with Moses to stand in the sacred [precinct] of the tabernacle, and with GOD himself, who beheld [them]; but most of all, immediately as Moses ended [his] life — as I was saying [in] quest. 1, p. 1 of this chapter. For not without a head, whom they would promise to obey, could so great a multitude rightly stay in an alien and foreign place and soil; nor for so long [could they] defer in any way [their] so due, [so] necessary duty — unless [they] were most foolish, most inert, and most contumacious. Hence [at] Deut., last [chapter], v. 9, the sons of Israel are said, after Moses [was] mourned [elutum], to have deferred [offered] the mind of obeying — but now [there was] the work [opus] itself. “And they obeyed,” says that text, “him, the sons of Israel.” Then, if all the tribes had not yet deferred this solemn office of obeying to him, how would he have dared to command them anything before? How would he not have called the whole multitude to himself, and exacted from them the office? But by right, and every order preserved [premised], he would have said to the princes of the people: “Cross through the middle of the camps, and command the people.” Besides indeed, since at v. 16 it is said, “And they responded to Joshua, and said” — is it not clearly enough signified [that] those responded whom he had present before himself [coram se], to whom he spoke, to whom [the things] which now have been expounded [in] quest. 2 he was proposing? But these are, as v. 12 notes, the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. By these, therefore, was this response given to Joshua. But whether that which Masius adjoins — [namely] that [passage] Deut. 18:15, “A prophet of thy nation, and of thy brethren like me, the Lord GOD will raise up to thee” — pertains to Joshua, as a type and form of Christ (there, and Acts 3:22, ch. 7:37, [it] is said)—