The LORD said to Moses: See the comments on 1.1.
Command the people of Israel, and say to them: Good News Translation uses indirect speech for this quote frame, as in 33.51 (see the comments there).
When you enter the land of Canaan: The Hebrew pronoun for you is plural, referring to the Israelites.
This is the land that shall fall to you for an inheritance, the land of Canaan in its full extent: There is no need to put this statement in parentheses (see the model below). Since the verb fall is used here, there is no indication who will divide the land. Rashi, the Jewish medieval commentator, noted that this verb is used because the land was divided by lot. However, the lot was used to allow the LORD to divide the land, so Good News Translation renders the land that shall fall to you as “the land which I am giving you” (similarly Reina-Valera Contemporánea), which can be a model in languages where the agent should be specified for naturalness.
The Hebrew term for inheritance is nachalah, which refers to inherited property that must not be sold or taken away (see 16.14; 33.54). New International Version renders for an inheritance as “as an inheritance,” which is more natural in English. Chewa says “that it will become your inheritance.”
The phrase the land of Canaan in its full extent (literally “the land of Canaan according to its borders”) may give the wrong suggestion that the land of Canaan included the area east of the Jordan River. So New Revised Standard Version says “the land of Canaan defined by its boundaries,” which is closer to the Hebrew.
In Revised Standard Version the sentence in the last half of verse 2 continues into verse 3. But the Hebrew allows for this sentence to finish within verse 2 (so Good News Translation, Bijbel: Vertaling in opdracht van het Nederlandsch Bijbelgenootschap, Buber, Luther). The following model ends the sentence in verse 2:
• When you enter the land of Canaan, this [as follows] will be the land that will fall to you as an inheritance, the land of Canaan, defined by its boundaries:….
Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .