1. Joshua called the men of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and East Manasseh to a meeting, and he told them:
2-3. You have obeyed every command of the Lord your God and of his servant Moses. And you have done everything I've told you to do. It's taken a long time, but you have stayed and helped your relatives.
4. The Lord promised to give peace to your relatives, and that's what he has done. Now it's time for you to go back to your own homes in the land that Moses gave you east of the River Jordan.
5. Moses taught you to love the Lord your God, to be faithful to him, and to worship and obey him with your whole heart and with all your strength. So be very careful to do everything Moses commanded.
10-11. The tribes of Reuben, Gad, and East Manasseh reached the western side of the Jordan Valley and built a huge altar there beside the river.When the rest of the Israelites heard what these tribes had done,
24-25. We built that altar because we were worried. Some day your descendants might tell our descendants, “The Lord made the River Jordan the boundary between us Israelites and you people of Reuben and Gad. The Lord is Israel's God, but you're not part of Israel, so you can't take part in worshipping the Lord.”Your descendants might say that and try to make our descendants stop worshipping and obeying the Lord.
27-29. To build another altar for offering sacrifices would be the same as turning our backs on the Lord and rebelling against him. We could never do that! No, we built the altar to remind us and you and the generations to come that we will worship the Lord. And so we will keep bringing our sacrifices to the Lord's altar, there in front of his sacred tent. Now your descendants will never be able to say to our descendants, “You can't worship the Lord.”But if they do say this, our descendants can answer back, “Look at this altar our ancestors built! It's like the Lord's altar, but it isn't for offering sacrifices. It's here to remind us and you that we belong to the Lord, just as much as you do.”
30-31. Phinehas and the clan leaders were pleased when they heard the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and East Manasseh explain why they had built the altar. Then Phinehas told them, “Today we know that the Lord is helping us. You have not been unfaithful to him, and this means that the Lord will not be angry with us.”