They came near before Eleazar the priest, and before Joshua the son of Nun, and before the princes, saying, Yahweh commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brothers: therefore according to the commandment of Yahweh he gave them an inheritance among the brothers of their father.
Although the Joseph tribes received the best part of Canaan, they were still not satisfied. They wanted more land, but they did not want to work for it or fight for it. Joshua told them that if they cleared the forests and drove out the Canaanites, they would find that they had plenty of land within the territory already allotted to them (14-18).