daf bit: Bava Batra 118

[cellio]

The talmud is in the midst of a discussion of how the land of Israel was allotted. Some hold that each (non-minor) man who came out of Egypt received a share, while others hold that each man who entered the land of Israel received a share. What about those who are in both categories? There are only two, Caleb and Yehoshua. The g'mara says that they took the shares of the (other ten) spies, or, some say, the shares of Korach and his sons, who had no share. (118b, with support from 117b)

Comments

[cellio]

Remember that the initial land allocation was by number of people by tribe, e.g. a larger tribe gets a larger share. I read this as saying that each of the other tribes "ceded" one person's allocation to either Caleb's or Joshua's tribe before that division. So if, say, one of the other tribes had 50,000 people, for purposes of land division it would have 49,999 and Caleb's tribe would have +1. As you said, it can't be that Caleb and Joshua between them have little bits in the other ten tribes' holdings.

(And oops, I forgot that Korach was a Levi! So I don't know how that works.)