Scripture Daily

Context No. 296 of 4322 · Joshua

Context · Reflection

Joshua 22:21-25: in context

21Then the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh answered, and spoke to the heads of the thousands of Israel, 22“The Mighty One, God, the LORD, the Mighty One, God, the LORD, he knows; and Israel shall know: if it was in rebellion, or if in trespass against the LORD (don’t save us today), 23that we have built us an altar to turn away from following the LORD; or if to offer burnt offering or meal offering, or if to offer sacrifices of peace offerings, let the LORD himself require it. 24“If we have not out of concern done this, and for a reason, saying, ‘In time to come your children might speak to our children, saying, “What have you to do with the LORD, the God of Israel? 25For the LORD has made the Jordan a border between us and you, you children of Reuben and children of Gad. You have no portion in the LORD.”’ So your children might make our children cease from fearing the LORD.

Israel has come to the brink of civil war over a misunderstanding, and this passage is the moment the misunderstanding is finally explained. The two and a half tribes who settled east of the Jordan had built a large altar by the river on their way home, and the western tribes assumed the worst: a rival altar meant rebellion against the LORD, a second center of worship, a betrayal. Armed men were already mustered to fight their own kin. Only now, with the accusation on the table, do the accused get to say what they actually meant.

Their explanation turns the whole thing inside out. They swear, invoking God's name over and over, that if they built it to rebel or to sacrifice apart from the LORD, God himself should call them to account and not spare them. The real reason was the opposite of rebellion. It was fear. They were afraid that generations from now, the children of the western tribes would look across the Jordan and tell their children, you have no portion in the LORD, the river is the border, you are not truly part of Israel, and so cut their descendants off from the God they loved. The altar was not a place of sacrifice at all. It was a witness, a monument built so that no future generation could ever tell their children they did not belong. What looked like a wall against God was raised out of a longing to stay inside his people.

The near-catastrophe came from reading an action before asking about the heart behind it. The western tribes saw rebellion and prepared for war; the truth was devotion and a fear of being excluded. Whose puzzling or offensive action have I already read as rebellion, ready to go to war over, without once asking what fear or love might actually be behind it?

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