17. Does the sin we committed at Peor mean nothing to us anymore? Didn’t we cleanse ourselves from it? Because of that sin there was a plague on the Lord’s congregation!
18. You have turned away from following the Lord! Today you rebel against the Lord, and tomorrow he will be angry with the whole congregation of Israel.
19. If your land is unclean, come over here to the Lord’s land. The Lord’s tent is standing here. Take some property for yourselves among us. Don’t rebel against the Lord or against us by building an altar for yourselves in addition to the altar of the Lord our God.
20. Didn’t Achan, son of Zerah, act faithlessly with the things claimed by the Lord? Didn’t the Lord become angry with the whole congregation of Israel? Achan wasn’t the only one who died because of his sin.”
21. Then the tribes of Reuben and Gad and half of the tribe of Manasseh answered the heads of the divisions of Israel.
22. They said, “The Lord is ⌊the only true⌋ God! The Lord is ⌊the only true⌋ God! He knows, so let Israel know! If our act is rebellious or unfaithful to the Lord,
23. don’t spare us today. If we built an altar with the intention of no longer following him, and if we built it for making burnt offerings, grain offerings, or fellowship offerings, let the Lord punish us.
24. “We were worried because of the situation we’re in. We thought sometime in the future your children might say to our children, ‘What relationship do you have with the Lord God of Israel?
25. The Lord has made the Jordan River a dividing line between us and you, the descendants of Reuben and Gad. You have no connection with the Lord!’ So your descendants would stop our descendants from worshiping the Lord.
26. Then we said, ‘Let’s build an altar for ourselves. It will not be for burnt offerings or sacrifices,
27. but it will stand as a witness between us for generations to come. It will stand as a witness that we may worship in the presence of the Lord with our burnt offerings, sacrifices, and fellowship offerings.’ Then your descendants cannot say to our descendants, ‘You have no connection with the Lord!’
28. So we thought, if this statement is made to us or to our descendants in the future, we will answer, ‘Look at the model of the Lord’s altar our ancestors made. They didn’t make it for burnt offerings or sacrifices but to stand as a witness between us.’
29. It would be unthinkable for us to rebel against the Lord or to turn back today from following the Lord by building an altar for burnt offerings, grain offerings, or sacrifices in addition to the altar of the Lord our God that is in front of his tent.”