Deuteronomy 33:21

And he saw that the land was good, and took his portion among the first; for there was a place strown with precious stones and pearls; for there is the place where Mosheh the prophet is hidden, who, as he went in and out at the head of the people in this world, will go in and out in the world that cometh; because he wrought righteousness before the Lord, and taught the orders of the judgments to the house of Israel his people.

He saw the beginning for him meaning, he looked after himself, and he requested his inheritance before the rest of Israel.

for there the portion [Hebrew: ḥelqa] a feminine variant of “portion” [Hebrew: ḥeleq].

statesman denotes a chief or a ruler, as in “my heart is with the leaders of Israel” [Judges 5: 9].

covered as in “paneled with cedar” [Jeremiah 22: 14] and “in your paneled houses” [Haggai 1: 4], both of which denote coating over with a veneer or a plating. Compare, “the ceiling beams” [I Kings 6: 15]. The meaning is that he beheld veneered palaces, which had been the possession of the Amorite chieftains.

The word he came is missing an ’alef. The meaning of the passage is that the leaders of Gad came over with the rest of Israel in battle formation, and Moshe foresaw this prophetically.

he performed God ’s righteousness i.e., he fulfilled in deed the thing of which he had spoken in word — namely, the children of Gad swore that they would go out in battle with Israel against their enemies [Numbers 32: 27]. Moshe does not mention Reuven in this context, perhaps because the tribe of Gad were more valorous than the tribe of Reuven (as is suggested by the passage in Chronicles, which says of Gad, “their faces were like the face of a lion” [I Chronicles 12: 9], without any similar statement about Reuven).

וירא ראשית לו, he was also entitled to this, although when the tribe of Gad chose lands formerly belonging to Sichon or Og, a land which was not part of the “Holy Land,” there had been additional motivation to that of having good grazing land for their flocks, namely that their part of the land would contain Moses’ burial place. This is the meaning of the reference to מחוקק, “the legislator” in our verse.

ויתא ראשי עם, this was where the leaders of the people came together at the head of the nation in order to conquer the land.

צדקת ה' עשה ומשפטיו עם ישראל, this was where the legislator, מחוקק, performed the righteous deeds of Hashem, by explaining to them G’d’s Torah in detail. This was also where the people of Israel were judged, and where Moses argued with the people about the application of the various social laws of the Torah. The term is found in Samuel I 12,7 where the prophet Samuel tells the people to line up so that he can not only judge the people but explain the righteousness of the laws of G’d, i.e. צדקות ה'.

וירא ראשית לו, “he chose a first part for himself;” (the tribe of Gad) he chose the first part of the available land of Canaan for himself.” This is a reference to the lands formerly owned by the kingdom of Sichon and the kingdom of Og, both on the east bank of the river Jordan.

כי שם חלקת מחוקק ספון, this needs to be translated as does Targum Onkelos, “he knew that the lawgiver, (Moses) would be buried on that portion of ancestral land.” This is why he chose this part of the territory of the east bank, although he also knew that Ammon and Moav both had claims on that piece of land. If he had worried about their claims being honoured in the future, he would not have chosen it as his share of the Holy Land.

צדקת ה' עשה, “he fulfilled the promise he had made to G–d via Moses to be in the vanguard of the army battling for the land on the west bank of the Jordan.