Nombres 1:2

According to their families. To know the number of each tribe

To the house of their fathers: Someone whose father is from one tribe and his mother from another tribe shall be maintained in his father’s tribe.

Individually Through the shekolim a half-shekel per head.

Take the account of the whole congregation of the Beni Israel, according to the families of their fathers' house, by the number of the names of all the males by their capitations.

To the home of their father-Because the mother's family is not [in this context] referred to as a family

שאו את ראש כל עדת, from this point on the Israelites were headed for the land of Israel, and all males over the age of 20 were enlisted in the army for that purpose, because on the 20th of the second month the Torah speaks of the people leaving the region of Mount Sinai, the cloud having lifted off the Tabernacle and begun to move ahead of the people. (Compare Numbers 10,11). In that chapter, verse 29, Moses invited his father-in-law Yitro to accompany the people who were now “journeying” toward the promised land. G’d issued the command to count the people so that one could keep track of how many soldiers there were. [and know if any would have become casualties in any battle. My words. Ed.]

שאו את ראש, to organise them so that they could proceed to the land of Israel immediately, without delay, each one of them knowing to which unit (flag) he belonged. At that point, no war of conquest had even been envisaged, the assumption having been that G’d would remove the inhabitants of the land of Canaan so that no face-to-face encounter would even be necessary. Evidence from Isaiah 17,9 suggests that in fact, at least partially, this even occurred after the 40 years in the desert. The prophet there reports that once again, as at the time when the Emorite and the Hittite abandoned their cities in the face of the advancing armies of the Israelites, history will repeat itself. [based on the Septuagint. Our author assumes that Isaiah may have referred to the tribe of the Girgashi, quoting Jerusalem Talmud Sh’viit 6,1 Ed.]
At any rate, due to the sin of the spies the seven Canaanites nations survived another 40 years during which they added to their sins so that at the end of that time G’d did not merely exile them but exterminated them.

במספר שמות, at that time, the names of the individuals reflected their specific individuality, in recognition of their individual virtues. [They were not merely named after their fathers or other departed relatives. Ed.] References to names reflecting an individual’s virtues are found in Exodus 33,17 when G’d said to Moses that He would ואדעך בשם, “I have singled you out by name;” the generation which eventually entered the Holy Land were not described as being counted במספר שמות (Numbers 26,2). The Torah there refers only to the people counted being of military age, i.e. above 20.
[The author, true to his concept of the highpoint of Jewish history having been the revelation at Mount Sinai, followed by an ongoing spiritual descent, only briefly and partially reversed on a few occasions, sees this as a further example of the generation which did enter the Holy Land already being inferior to the ones experiencing the revelation, i.e. before the sin of the golden calf and the spies. Ed.] The count of the Israelites at this point assumed that the very people being counted would each enter the Holy Land unless some sin occurred which would interfere with this lofty vision.

שאו את ראש בני ישראל , “take a census of the sum of Children of Israel;” according to Rav b’chor shor, this census was performed by means of each person included handing over a shekel, as opposed to the census in Exodus 30,13, where only the total number of Israelite males between the ages of 20 and 60 was of interest. Here we find that the number counted in each tribe is listed separately, and they were listed according to families, i.e. each individual was of consequence. In Numbers, in the fortieth year after the Exodus it was of interest to number of members of each tribe all of whom had replaced the generation that had been condemned to die in the desert. This latter count did not include a single person who had been counted by Moses and Aaron at this time.