23. Do you think we built our own altar because we want to turn away from the Lord? Do you think we built another altar for burnt offerings, grain offerings, and fellowship offerings? If that is why we built this altar, we ask the Lord himself to punish us.
24. But that is not why we built it. We built it because we were afraid that in the future your descendants might not accept us as part of God’s people. So your children might say to our children, ‘You people have no reason to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.
25. The Lord separated you people of Reuben and Gad from us by giving you the land on the other side of the Jordan River. So you are not part of the Lord’S people.’ If your children said that, it might make our children stop worshiping the Lord.
26. “So we decided to build this altar. But we did not plan to use it for burning offerings and sacrifices.
27. The real reason we wanted our altar was to show our people that we worship the same God you do. This altar will be the proof to you and us and to all our future children that we worship the Lord. We give our sacrifices, grain offerings, and fellowship offerings to the Lord. We wanted your children to grow up and know that we are also Israelites like yourselves.
28. In the future, if it happens that your children say that we don’t belong to Israel, then our children can say, ‘Look, our fathers who lived before us made an altar. That altar is exactly like the Lord’S altar at the Holy Tent. We don’t use this altar for sacrifices—this altar is proof that we are part of Israel.’