14. They also sent one leader of each of the ten tribes at Shiloh. Each of these men was a leader of his family group of Israelites.
15. So these men went to Gilead. They went to talk to the people of Reuben, Gad and the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh. The men said to them:
16. “All the Israelites ask you: ‘Why did you turn against the God of Israel? Why did you build an altar for yourselves? You know that this is against God’s law.
17. Remember what happened at Peor? We still suffer today because of that sin. Because of it, God caused many of the Israelites to become very sick.
18. And now are you doing the same thing? Are you turning against the Lord? Will you refuse to follow the Lord?“‘If you don’t stop what you’re doing, the Lord will be angry with everyone in Israel.
19. Your land may not be a good enough place to worship. If not, come over into our land. The Lord’s Tent is in our land. You may have some of our land and live there. But don’t turn against the Lord by building another altar. We already have the altar of the Lord our God.
20. Remember Achan son of Zerah. He refused to obey the command about what must be completely destroyed. That one man broke God’s law, but all the Israelites were punished. Achan died because of his sin. But many other people also died.’”
21. The people from Reuben, Gad and the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh answered them. They said:
22. “The Lord is our God! Again we say that the Lord is our God! God knows why we did this. We want you to know also. You can judge what we did. If you believe we have done something wrong, you may kill us.
23. If we broke God’s law, we ask the Lord himself to punish us. Do you think we built this altar to offer burnt offerings? And did we build it to use for offerings of grain and fellowship?
24. “No! We did not build it for that reason. We feared that some day your people would not accept us as part of your nation. Then they might say, ‘You cannot worship the Lord, the God of Israel.
25. God gave you land on the other side of the Jordan River. It separates us from you people of Reuben and Gad. You cannot worship the Lord.’ So we feared that your children 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 sacrifices and making offerings.
27. It was really to show our people that we worship the same God as you. This altar is proof to you and us. And it will prove to all our children who will come after us that we worship the Lord. We give our whole burnt offerings, grain and fellowship offerings to the Lord. This was to keep your children from saying that our children could not worship the Lord.
28. “In the future your children might say that we do not belong to Israel. Then our children could say, ‘Look! Our fathers who lived before us made an altar. It is exactly like the Lord’s altar. We do not use it for sacrifices. This altar shows that we are part of Israel.’