and if we have not done it from fear of this thing, saying, In future your children will speak to our children, saying, What have ye to do with Jehovah the God of Israel?
The eastern tribes stand accused of rebellion. Here they give their reason: fear of the future. A river now ran between them and the rest of Israel. They dreaded the day when the children on the other side would tell their children they had no share in the Lord.
The fear was not imaginary. The Jordan really did divide them, and it divided them because of where they had settled.
Certainly Jordan was a border. It was plain to them that crossing it looked like leaving the Lord, with His holy tabernacle and its blessings, and that doing so was full of danger.
Their choice had been made long before, when good pastureland east of the river seemed reason enough to stop short.
They evidently thought less of God's call to Canaan and the pilgrimage of their brothers than of present advantages. Abraham, their ancestor, knew nothing of that side of Jordan. Moses had not mentioned it, and when they left Egypt nothing short of the promised land was before them.
In their speech the threat comes from the tribes living beside the tabernacle. Nobody on the western side had ever said such a thing.
Their brothers had never suggested divisions among the Israel of the Lord. They had never said that the Jordan was a separation between them. They had never said that their children should stop fearing the Lord. But so it is. Suppose a believer leaves his more devoted companions for a worldly tie. He will always blame those who stay with God for the results. Blaming godly people is a common ointment for an uneasy conscience. Finding fault with your brother is a universal remedy for covering your own shame.
Their fear was not the start of the problem. It was the bill arriving. A position taken for convenience keeps producing new complications.
A Christian may stop living by faith and let the principles of the world govern his conduct, even in part. Then his position is bound to become very complicated. Yet nothing is simpler than the path of faith… The Jordan separates them from the rest of the tribes. They are uneasy. They fear that the bond of fellowship between them and their brothers may not be strong enough to resist the force of the river. Their position exposes them to division. They see with worry that a moment may come when their brothers will treat them as strangers.
Another writer names the root cause, and what the altar came to stand for.
The fears of the two and a half tribes would never have arisen had they not decided to remain on the east of the Jordan, to stop short of God's purpose for His people… The altar of Ed, which means witness, stayed as a witness that the two and a half tribes belonged to Israel.
Their answer to the fear was to build something visible for miles. It carried no sacrifice, and it could not give back what distance had cost them.
They were far from the tabernacle, with its ark of the covenant and the mercy seat that went with it. Of that place God had said, "There I will meet with you and… I will speak with you." No altar, however "imposing" its size, could ever make up for the loss of this. On their altar, as they openly admit, no one could offer burnt offerings or grain offerings or peace offerings. It was only something to look at. It was there to keep their children from ceasing to fear the Lord, and to witness to their place and portion in Israel.
The western tribes were not overreacting. They feared where the new altar could lead.
But behind this altar of Ed, which a spirit of worldliness had made necessary, there might lie a still worse source of evil. Building it at all might open the door to independence. This was what the children of Israel dreaded, and we see them taking it very much to heart. Independence is on the verge of creeping in, their oneness is threatened.
The same failure appears among believers today.
How many there are whose place and portion among the people of God no one can question! Yet they are not ready to take possession of their heavenly position. So they settle down in comfortable surroundings on the wrong side of Jordan… They are content to keep up their Christian profession in a religious world, where there is often "an altar of imposing size." They fall short of their heavenly calling, and often become world-borderers.
- Choice — The tribes settled east of the Jordan for good pasture. They stopped short of what God had promised. Every later trouble in the chapter grows out of that one choice.
- Border — The river they chose as a home boundary became a line they feared in worship. A compromise made for convenience turns into a division.
- Blame — Their speech blames the tribes living near the tabernacle, who had said nothing. Faulting the faithful is an old way to quiet an uneasy conscience.
- Substitute — Their large altar carried no offerings. It could not replace the place where God promised to meet His people.
- Borderers — A second altar put Israel's oneness at risk. Believers today can still settle on the wrong side of Jordan and fall short of their heavenly calling.
Jehovah hath made the Jordan a border between us and you, ye children of Reuben and children of Gad, ye have no portion in Jehovah! And so shall your children make our children cease from fearing Jehovah.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And we said, Let us now set to work to build an altar, not for burnt-offering, nor for sacrifice,
Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh had settled east of the Jordan. On their way home from the wars they built a large altar by the river. This verse is their defence. They explain what the altar was for — and what it was not for.
They copied the real altar at the tabernacle. But they ruled out ever offering anything on it.
They explain therefore the real reason for the altar. They were worried about the future. The children of Israel west of Jordan might question their right to any relationship with Israel, because the Jordan came between them (vv. 24-25). So they decided to build the altar, not to offer sacrifices, but as a standing witness to their identification with the rest of Israel (vv. 26-27). It was not an independent altar, but a replica of Israel's altar (vv. 28-29).
The altar was huge, and Israel drew the worst conclusion from it.
It was of immense size, so that it might be seen far and wide as a silent witness. When the rest of Israel heard of this altar, they thought it meant a separate worship set up by these two and a half tribes, and they were ready to go to war.
Their "therefore" points back to a fear about their children. One writer asks what that fear revealed.
They had lost the place in the land where the Lord had recorded His name. There, in the priesthood and the sacrifices, He had also provided for their worship and for their restoration when defiled. The returning tribes build an altar by Jordan, "a great altar to look at," in case the children of the other tribes should say to their children in time to come, "You have no portion in the LORD." They name the altar Ed, which means "witness." But was it not a witness that they were not in the place of privilege where they might have been?
The explanation satisfied Israel. Another commentator presses further back, to the choice that made any explanation necessary.
All this serious misunderstanding, all this trouble and alarm, came from failure on the part of Reuben and Gad. True, they are able to explain themselves and satisfy the other tribes about the altar. But then there would have been no need of the altar, no demand for explanation, no cause of alarm, had they not taken up an ambiguous position.
They lived far from Shiloh, where the tabernacle stood. There they could not feel their oneness with the other tribes. So they built something they could feel.
But why all this? Had they remained in Canaan, where the ark and tabernacle of God were, they would not have needed this. But they were not there. Shiloh was not in view. Their souls could not hold the sense that Shiloh was their common centre with all the other tribes. They had to give themselves some artificial help. They needed a crutch for their souls, to support the confidence and joy of their hearts — that as Israelites they shared fellowship, common interests and calling with the other tribes.
Their whole story began with what looked good to the eye, and the altar matched it.
Their "great altar to look at" fitted perfectly with their choice of what they had seen on this side of Jordan. It was a craving after the visible. It was a subtle trap too. They did not mean to abandon the worship of the God of Israel. But they had made a false choice in settling down in Jazer and Gilead. Their human solution is the building of the great altar to look at, something great that appealed to the eye — in reality an effort to bring God to man's ground instead of man to God's.
The name they chose carries the point of the verse. The same writer then turns that name into a question for today.
The altar was then called Ed, which means "witness." It was to bear witness between them that the Lord is God, and that the tribes, though separated by Jordan, are one people. But where is the witness in Christendom today that there is one body? That witness seems to have been lost.
The alternative is a life so clear that it needs no marker to explain it.
May we, to use the language of Joshua 22, so carry ourselves that we need no altar to look at. May we need nothing to declare where we belong, where we worship, whose we are and whom we serve. Then everything about us will be transparent and beyond question. Our testimony will be clear, and the sound of our trumpet certain.
- Choice. Settling short of the land created the whole problem. A clear position would have needed no altar and no explanation.
- Distance. With Shiloh out of sight, they lost the sense of a shared centre. So they propped up their hearts with something of their own making.
- Copy. They copied the real altar but barred it from sacrifice — a monument, not a place of worship.
- Witness. Named Ed, "witness," it declared that the Lord is God and that tribes divided by a river are still one people.
- Transparency. Aim at a life so plain that it needs no monument to show whose we are and whom we serve.
but to be a witness between us and you, and between our generations after us, that we might do service to Jehovah before him with our burnt-offerings, and with our sacrifices, and with our peace-offerings; that your children may not say to our children in future, Ye have no portion in Jehovah.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And we said, If it shall be that in future they so say to us and to our generations, we will say, Behold the pattern of the altar of Jehovah which our fathers made, not for burnt-offering, nor for sacrifice, but as a witness between us and you.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.