21. The Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh answered the leaders of the Israelite clans:
22. “El, God, the Lord! El, God, the Lord! He knows the truth! Israel must also know! If we have rebelled or disobeyed the Lord, don’t spare us today!
23. If we have built an altar for ourselves to turn back from following the Lord by making burnt sacrifices and grain offerings on it, or by offering tokens of peace on it, the Lord himself will punish us.
24. We swear we have done this because we were worried that in the future your descendants would say to our descendants, ‘What relationship do you have with the Lord God of Israel?
25. The Lord made the Jordan a boundary between us and you Reubenites and Gadites. You have no right to worship the Lord.’ In this way your descendants might cause our descendants to stop obeying the Lord.
26. So we decided to build this altar, not for burnt offerings and sacrifices,