Joshua 22

Thomson^{(i) 1} Then Joshua convened the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, ² and said to them, You have hearkened to all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you; and you have obeyed my orders according to all that he commanded you. ³ You have not for these many years left your brethren: even to this day you have kept the command of the Lord your God. ⁴ Now the Lord our God hath given our brethren rest as he promised them. Now therefore return and go to your homes, and to the land of your possession, which Moses gave you on the bank of the Jordan. ⁵ But be very careful to perform the commandments and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord charged you to do, to love the Lord our God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, and to cleave to him and serve him with your whole heart, and with your whole soul. ⁶ Then Joshua blessed them and dismissed them, and they set out on their return to their homes. ⁷ Now to one half of the tribe of Manasses Moses had given a possession in Basanitis, and to the other half Joshua gave one on the western side of the Jordan, among their brethren. So when Joshua had sent them away to their homes, and blessed them, ⁸ they set out homewards with much wealth, for they had shared with their brethren, vast numbers of cattle, and a great abundance of silver, and gold, and iron, and raiment, the spoil of their enemies. ⁹ And when the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, had set out from the children of Israel, at Selo in the land of Chanaan, to go to Galaad, to the land of their possession, which they had got from Moses by the command of the Lord, ¹⁰ and were come to Galaad of the Jordan, which is in the land of Chanaan, the Reubenites and the Gadites, and the half of the tribe of Manasses built there an altar by the Jordan; an altar great and conspicuous. ¹¹ And when the Israelites heard it said, Behold the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half of the tribe of Manasses have built an altar on the borders of the land of Chanaan, at Galaad of the Jordan, on the bank of the children of Israel, ¹² all the Israelites assembled at Selo, to go up to war against them. ¹³ And the children of Israel sent to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half of the tribe of Manasses, to the land of Galaad, Phineas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the chief priest, ¹⁴ and ten of the chiefs with him, a chief from the head family of every tribe of Israel. Now the chiefs of the head families are the chiliarchs of Israel. ¹⁵ And when they came to the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, to the land of Galaad, they spoke to them, saying, ¹⁶ Thus saith the whole congregation of the Lord, What trespass is this which you have committed in the presence of the God of Israel, to turn away this day from the Lord, having built for yourselves an altar that you may apostatize from the Lord? ¹⁷ Is the sin of Phogor a small matter to you? Because we have not been cleansed from it even to this day, though there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord; ¹⁸ are you therefore now turned away from the Lord? For the consequence will be, if you this day apostatize from the Lord, there will be to-morrow wrath against all Israel. ¹⁹ Now if the land of your possession be too small for you, come over to the land of the possession of the Lord, where the tabernacle of the Lord is pitched, and take a possession among us, and do not become apostates from God, nor revolt from the Lord by building for yourselves an altar apart from the altar of the Lord our God. ²⁰ Behold when Achar, son of Zara, committed a trespass in regard to the Anathema, was there not wrath against all the congregation of Israel, so that he perished not alone for his sin? ²¹ In reply to this the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, said to the chiliarchs of Israel, ²² The Lord God is our God, and God himself our God hath seen, and Israel themselves may determine. If through apostacy we have trespassed in the sight of the Lord, let him not this day deliver us. ²³ Or if we have built an altar for ourselves, to apostatize from the Lord our God, or to offer thereon a sacrifice of whole burnt offerings, or to offer thereon a sacrifice of thanksgiving, let the Lord make inquisition. ²⁴ Indeed from a sacred regard to this matter we have done this, saying, That your children may not hereafter say to our children, What have you to do with the Lord God of Israel? ²⁵ The Lord hath made the Jordan a boundary between us and you; so that you have no portion in the Lord. And so your children may make our children strangers, that they may not worship the Lord, ²⁶ we therefore determined to act in this manner; to build this altar, not for the purpose of homage offerings, nor for sacrifices; ²⁷ but that it may be a witness between us and you, and our posterity after us, of our right to perform the service of the Lord before him, with our homage offerings, and our incense offerings, and our sacrifices of thanksgiving; so that your children may not say to our children, You have no portion in the Lord. ²⁸ For we said, If it should ever happen that they should speak so to us, or to our posterity hereafter, they may say, Behold the similitude of the altar of the Lord which our fathers made, not for the purpose of homage offerings, nor for sacrifices, but to be a witness between you and us, and our children after us. ²⁹ God forbid that we should turn away from the Lord, by apostatizing this day from the Lord, so far as to build an altar for the purpose of homage offerings, or incense offerings, or sacrifices of thanksgiving, over and above the altar of the Lord, which is before his tabernacle. ³⁰ When Phineas the priest, and all the chief's of the congregation of Israel who were with him, heard the words which the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, had spoken, they were pleased. ³¹ And Phineas the priest said to the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, This day we perceive that the Lord is with us, because you have not committed a trespass before the Lord, and because you have delivered the Israelites out of the hand of the Lord. ³² So Phineas the priest returned, with the chiefs, from the children of Reuben, and from the children of Gad, and from the half of the tribe of Manasses, from Galaad to the land of Chanaan, to the children of Israel, and brought them this answer, ³³ and it pleased them. Upon their delivering this message to the children of Israel, they blessed the God of the Israelites, and no more talked of going up against them to battle, to lay waste the land of the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and of the half of the tribe of Manasses. So they dwelt therein, ³⁴ and Joshua gave a name to the altar of Reuben, and Gad, and the half of the tribe of Manasses, and said, It is a witness for them that the Lord is their God.