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CHAPTER 12 : Return of the two and a half Tribes to their Homes -
Building of an Altar by them - Embassy to them - Joshua's Farewell
Addresses - Death of Joshua - Review of his Life and Work.
(JOSHUA 22-24)
YET another trial awaited Joshua, ere he put off the armor and laid him down to rest.
Happily, it was one which he rather dreaded than actually experienced. The work given
him to do was ended, and each of the tribes had entered on its God-given inheritance.
And now the time had come for those faithful men who so truly had discharged their
undertaking to recross Jordan, and "get unto to the land of their possession." These
many years had the men of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh fought and waited by the side
of their brethren. And now that God had given them rest, Joshua dismissed the tried
warriors with a blessing, only bidding them fight in their own homes that other warfare,
in which victory meant loving the Lord, walking in His ways, keeping His
commandments, and cleaving unto and serving Him.
It must have been with a heavy heart that Joshua saw them depart from Shiloh.^150 It
was not merely that to himself it would seem like the beginning of the end, but that
misgivings and fears could not but crowd upon his mind.
They parted from Shiloh to comparatively far distances, to be separated from their
brethren by Jordan, and scattered amid the wide tracts, in which their nomadic pastoral
life would bring them into frequent and dangerous contact with heathen neighbors.
They were now united to their brethren; they had fought by their side; would this union
continue? The very riches with which they departed to their distant homes (22:8) might
become a source of danger. They had parted with Jehovah's blessing and monition from
the central sanctuary at Shiloh. Would it remain such to them, and they preserve the
purity of their faith at a distance from the tabernacle and its services? Joshua
remembered only too well the past history of Israel; he knew that even now idolatry,
although publicly non-existent, had still its roots and fibers in many a household as a
sort of traditional superstition (24:23). Under such circumstances it was that strange
tidings reached Israel and Joshua. Just before crossing Jordan the two and a half tribes
had built an altar that could be seen far and wide, and then departed without leaving any
explanation of their conduct. At first sight this would have seemed in direct
contravention of one of the first principles of Israel's worship. Place, time, and manner
of it were all God-ordained and full of meaning, and any departure therefrom, even in
the slightest particular, destroyed the meaning, and with it the value of all. More
especially would this appear an infringement of the express commands against another
altar and other worship (Leviticus 17:8, 9; Deuteronomy 12:5-7), to which the terrible
punishment of extermination attached (Deuteronomy 13:12-18). And yet there was
something so strange in rearing this altar on the western side of the Jordan,^151 and not
(^)