commander: the person put in charge of a group, whose decision settles what it does
This word names whoever is in charge, the one whose decision settles what a group does. It is less a title on an organization chart than a description of authority actually in use, and the Hebrew Bible reaches for it in three settings.
- the officers who led Israel's fighting men, the ones Joshua called forward to put their feet on the necks of captured kings
- the town leaders whose job was to know what justice required, whom Micah accuses of hating it instead
- the man his neighbors grab by the sleeve when everything is falling apart and beg to take charge of the ruin
What holds the three together is that the authority is handed over for a job rather than inherited with a crown. No reigning monarch is ever called this. Jephthah is offered the position by desperate elders who had driven him out years earlier, and in Isaiah's picture of a city coming apart it is pressed on a man whose only remaining qualification is that he still owns a coat. A king (מֶלֶךְ) holds a throne; this person holds a responsibility.
That is also why the prophets turn the word into an accusation. To be given this position is to be given the duty of deciding rightly, so when Isaiah addresses Jerusalem's leaders as "rulers of Sodom", and when Micah says they ought to know justice and instead twist it, the word itself is part of the charge.