l also shall understand: If with the design of
transgression we have set up this altar, let him not save us, but punish
us immediately:

22:23. And if we did it with that mind, that we might lay upon it
holocausts, and sacrifice, and victims of peace offerings, let him
require and judge:

22:24. And not rather with this thought and design, that we should say:
To morrow your children will say to our children: What have you to do
with the Lord the God of Israel?

22:25. The Lord hath put the river Jordan for a border between us and
you, O ye children of Ruben, and ye children of Gad: and therefore you
have no part in the Lord. And by this occasion your children shall turn
away our children from the fear of the Lord. We therefore thought it
best,

22:26. And said: Let us build us an altar, not for holocausts, nor to
offer victims,

22:27. But for a testimony between us and you, and our posterity and
yours, that we may serve the Lord, and that we may have a right to offer
both holocausts, and victims and sacrifices of peace offerings: and that
your children to morrow may not say to our children: You have no part in
the Lord.

22:28. And if they will say so, they shall answer them: Behold the altar
of the Lord, which our fathers made, not for holocausts, nor for
sacrifice, but for a testimony between us and you.

22:29. God keep us from any such wickedness that we should revolt from
the Lord, and leave off following his steps, by building an altar to
offer holocausts, and sacrifices, and victims, beside the altar of the
Lord our God, which is erected before his tabernacle.

22:30. And when Phinees the priest, and the princes of the embassage,
who were with him, had heard this, they were satisfied: and they
admitted most willingly the words of the children of Ruben, and Gad, and
of the half tribe of Manasses,

22:31. And Phinees the priest the son of Eleazar said to them: Now we
know that the Lord is with us, because you are not guilty of this
revolt, and you have delivered the children of Israel from the hand of
the Lord.

22:32. And he returned with the princes from the children of Ruben and
Gad, out of the land of Galaad, into the land of Chanaan, to the
children of Israel, and brought them word again.

22:33. And the saying pleased all that heard it. And the children of
Israel praised God, and they no longer said that they would go up
against them, and fight, and destroy the land of their possession.

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