8. and spoke to them saying: “Return to your tents with great wealth and with very much cattle, with silver, gold, bronze, iron and with very many clothes. Share the spoil of your enemies with your brothers.”
9. So the children of Reuben, the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh returned and departed from Bnei-Yisrael at Shiloh in the land of Canaan, to go to the land of Gilead, to the land of their inheritance that they had possessed, according to the mouth of Adonai by Moses’ hand.
10. Now when they came to the region near the Jordan in the land of Canaan, the children of Reuben, the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by the Jordan—a large, conspicuous altar.
11. Then Bnei-Yisrael heard about it and said: “Behold, the children of Reuben, the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built an altar opposite the land of Canaan, in the region of the Jordan, across from Bnei-Yisrael.”
12. And when Bnei-Yisrael heard of it, the whole congregation of Bnei-Yisrael assembled at Shiloh to go up against them in war.
13. So Bnei-Yisrael sent word to the children of Reuben, the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh, into the land of Gilead, Phinehas son of Eleazar the kohen,
14. and with him ten chieftains, one chieftain from each ancestral house of each of the tribes of Israel. Every one of them was the head of his ancestral house among the thousands of Israel.
15. So they came to the children of Reuben, the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh in the land of Gilead, and spoke with them saying:
16. “Thus says the whole congregation of Adonai: ‘What is this treachery that you have committed today against the God of Israel, by turning away from following Adonai, building yourselves an altar, rebelling this day against Adonai?
17. Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, from which we have not cleansed ourselves to this day, although a plague came on the congregation of Adonai,