The Altar That Nearly Became a Battlefield

Joshua’s first words to these three tribes, in 1:12–15, held their fighting men to a promise. His last words to them, here, release them from it. The two speeches frame the whole campaign, with the eastern tribes present at its start and its end.

In 1:16 the tribes had pledged, “All that thou commandest us we will do.” Joshua now certifies it: they kept Moses’ command and obeyed his own voice. He sets his own orders beside Moses’ in the same sentence.

“Kept the charge” is mishmeret, guard duty, the word used for the Levites who “keep the charge” of the tabernacle (Numbers 3:7). The eastern soldiers are credited with a kind of sentry duty: staying at their post “these many days”.

“Unto your tents” means home, even to people who lived in houses. The idiom outlived the wilderness: when the northern tribes broke from Rehoboam, the cry was “To your tents, O Israel” (1 Kings 12:16).

The charge is Deuteronomy in miniature, close to 10:12 and 11:22: love, walk in his ways, keep, cleave, serve “with all your heart and with all your soul”. Joshua sends the soldiers home with Moses’ sermon in one sentence.

Solomon does the same at the dedication of the temple: he blesses the people and sends them away, and they go “unto their tents joyful and glad of heart” (1 Kings 8:66). A blessing and a dismissal belong together.

The verse stops to explain Manasseh’s double position: half of the tribe had land east, from Moses, and half west, from Joshua. It is the one tribe whose returning soldiers are leaving their own kin behind. Joshua blesses them a second time.

Silver, gold, brass, iron and raiment are the same valuables that went to the treasury at Jericho (6:19); now they go home with the soldiers. Numbers 31:27 had ordered spoil split between fighters and the congregation, and David later made it law: “as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff” (1 Samuel 30:24).

The verse names the two banks differently: Shiloh is “in the land of Canaan”, while the eastern tribes go to “the country of Gilead”. That distinction in names is the seed of the crisis that follows.

“Borders of Jordan” is geliloth, the circles or districts of the Jordan. “In the land of Canaan” would place the altar on the western bank, though verse 11 can be read otherwise, and where exactly it stood is still argued. “To see to” means conspicuous, big enough to be seen from afar.

“Heard say” is rumour. Deuteronomy 13:12–14 had laid down what to do when Israel should “hear say” that a town had turned to other gods: “then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently.” The next verses show Israel both arming and asking.

This is the only time in the Book of Joshua that Israel musters against its own tribes. The Book of Judges will record a civil war that actually happened, against Benjamin, where no answer given in time prevented it (Judges 20).

Phinehas is the priest who at Peor drove a spear through an Israelite and a Midianite woman and was given “the covenant of an everlasting priesthood” (Numbers 25:7–13). The man best known for zeal is sent to ask questions first.

Ten princes, one for each western tribe, counting western Manasseh as one. “Thousands” is alafim, a word for military or clan units, as in “the thousands of Israel”. The whole west is represented in the delegation.

The delegation crosses the river it fears is becoming a dividing line. The talking happens on the eastern bank, in the accused tribes’ own country, “the land of Gilead”, not in a summons to Shiloh.

“Rebel” is marad, the word for political revolt, used when Hezekiah “rebelled against the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 18:7). The delegation frames the altar as treason against Israel’s king. “Trespass” is maal, the word for Achan’s sin (7:1).

Psalm 106:28–31 remembers Peor the same way, with Phinehas’ intervention “counted unto him for righteousness”. Hosea 9:10 says Israel at Baal-peor “separated themselves unto that shame”. Phinehas himself is speaking of a stain he once helped to stop.

In the rebellion of Korah, Moses had pleaded against collective punishment: “shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?” (Numbers 16:22). The delegation fears exactly that, and puts it in a timetable: today you rebel, tomorrow he is angry with everyone.

“The land of the possession of the LORD” calls the west God’s own holding. Hosea 9:3 uses the same idea, “They shall not dwell in the LORD’s land”, and Amos 7:17 speaks of dying “in a polluted land” abroad. The offer to share their own allotments is costly.

The Hebrew stresses the number: “and he, one man, did not perish alone in his iniquity.” The delegation’s argument rests on three rhetorical questions (verses 16, 17 and 20), each drawn from Israel’s own recent history.

The eastern tribes address their answer to “the heads of the thousands of Israel”, the clan leaders, rather than to Phinehas the priest. They speak to the delegates as fellow tribal chiefs.

The divine names are El, Elohim, YHWH, said twice. The same three open Psalm 50:1, “The mighty God, even the LORD, hath spoken”. “Save us not this day” is a self curse, bracketed in the King James as an aside: if we are lying, do not rescue us.

“Meat offering” means the grain offering, minchah; in 1611 “meat” meant food of any kind. “Let the LORD himself require it” is an oath formula, as in 1 Samuel 20:16, “Let the LORD even require it at the hand of David’s enemies.”

“What have ye to do with the LORD” renders an idiom, “what is there to you and to the LORD”, used to push someone away: Jephthah uses it to Ammon (Judges 11:12), David to the sons of Zeruiah (2 Samuel 16:10). The eastern tribes imagine their children being told they have no business with Israel’s God.

The insult they feared did come in another form: in Jephthah’s day, the men of Ephraim taunted the Gileadites, “Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim” (Judges 12:4), and a war followed. The friction across the river was real.

The builders quote their own earlier discussion: “Therefore we said”. Verses 26 and 28 both begin with it, showing the altar as the result of a deliberation, not an impulse. The first thing they say about it is what it is not for.

“Witness” is ed, the word that will become the altar’s name. Jacob and Laban once raised a heap of stones in this same region and called it Galeed, “the heap of witness”, which gave Gilead its name (Genesis 31:47–48).

“Pattern” is tavnit, the word for the heavenly plan of the tabernacle shown to Moses: “after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount” (Exodus 25:40). The eastern altar is a copy of the real one, built to point to it.

“God forbid” is chalilah, “far be it”, the word Abraham used to God over Sodom: “That be far from thee to do after this manner” (Genesis 18:25). The defence ends by naming the one true altar, “before his tabernacle”.

“It pleased them” is literally “it was good in their eyes”. The narration now names “the children of Manasseh”, dropping “the half tribe” for once, as if the eastern half has been restored to the whole.

At Massah the people had asked, “Is the LORD among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7). Phinehas answers that question in the affirmative: “This day we perceive that the LORD is among us.” The fear of wrath turns into evidence of presence.

“Brought them word again” is the phrase used for the spies’ report at Kadesh (Numbers 13:26) and for Caleb’s report (14:7). This delegation is the book’s last scouting party, and its report calms the camp instead of alarming it.

The verse closes the only threatened civil war in the Book of Joshua without a blow struck. “Blessed God” is the people’s response; the plan to “destroy the land” where two tribes lived is dropped.

“The LORD is God” is the confession the people shout on Mount Carmel after Elijah’s sacrifice: “The LORD, he is the God” (1 Kings 18:39). The altar that nearly caused a war is named for a witness, and the witness is to that sentence.