17. Is it a small thing to you that you have sinned with Baal of Peor, and that the stain of that crime continues among us, even to the present day? And many of the people have fallen.
18. And yet you have forsaken the Lord today, and tomorrow his wrath will rage against all of Israel.
19. But if you consider the land of your possession to be unclean, cross over to the land in which is the tabernacle of the Lord, and live among us. But do not withdraw from the Lord, and from our fellowship, by building an altar contrary to the altar of the Lord our God.
20. Did not Achan, the son of Zerah, go against the commandment of the Lord, and so his wrath was laid over all the people of Israel? And he was only one man. If only he had perished in his wickedness alone!"
21. And the sons of Reuben, and of Gad, and of the one half tribe of Manasseh responded to the leaders of the delegation from Israel:
22. "The Lord, the almighty God, the Lord, the almighty God, he knows, and also Israel will understand: If we have constructed this altar with intent of transgression, let him not preserve us, but instead punish us immediately.
23. And if we have acted with a mind so that we might present upon it holocausts, and sacrifice, and victims of peace offerings, let him inquire and judge.
24. Instead, we have acted with this greater thought and design, that we would say: Tomorrow your sons will say to our sons: 'What is there between you and the Lord, the God of Israel?
25. The Lord has stationed the river Jordan as the border between us and you, O sons of Reuben, O sons of Gad. And therefore, you have no part in the Lord.' And by this occasion, your sons would turn away our sons from the fear of the Lord. And so we sought something better,
26. and we said: Let us build us an altar, not for holocausts, and not to offer victims,
27. but as a testimony between us and you, and between our descendents and your progeny, so that we may serve the Lord, and so that it may be our right to offer holocausts, and victims, and peace offerings, and so that tomorrow your sons may not say to our sons: 'You have no part in the Lord.'
28. And if they decide to say this, they shall respond to them: 'Behold, the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made, not for holocausts, and not for sacrifice, but instead as a testimony between us and you.'
29. May this wickedness be far from us, such that we would withdraw from the Lord, and would forsake his paths, by constructing an altar to offer holocausts, and sacrifices, and victims, contrary to the altar of the Lord our God, which was built before his tabernacle."
30. And when Phinehas, the priest, and the leaders of the delegation who were with him, had heard this, they were pleased. And they accepted very willingly the words of the sons of Reuben, and of Gad, and of the one half tribe of Manasseh.
31. And Phinehas, the priest, the son of Eleazar, said to them: "Now we know that the Lord is with us. For you are a stranger to this transgression. And so you have freed the sons of Israel from the hand of the Lord."
32. And he returned with the leaders, from the sons of Reuben and of Gad, out of the land of Gilead, into the parts of Canaan, to the sons of Israel. And he reported to them.
33. And the word pleased all who heard it. And the sons of Israel praised God, and they no longer said that they would go up against them, and fight, and destroy the land of their possession.
34. And the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad called the altar that they had built: Our testimony that the Lord himself is God.