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 on

the eastern, and in their own possession, that their conduct, however b lameworthy, might possibly bear

another explanation than that of the great crime of apostasy.

It was an anxious time when the whole congregation gathered, by their representatives, at Shiloh, not to

worship, but to consider the question of going to war with their own brethren and companions in arms, and

on such grounds. Happily, before taking decided action, a deputation was sent to expostulate with the two

and a half tribes. It consisted of ten princes, representatives, each of a tribe, and all "heads of houses of

their fathers," though, of course, not the actual chiefs of their tribes. At their head was Phinehas, the

presumptive successor to the high priesthood, to whose zeal, which had once stayed the plague of Peor, the

direction might safely be left. We are not told how they gathered the representatives of the offending tribes,

but the language in which, as recorded, the latter were addressed, is quite characteristic of Phinehas.

The conduct of the two and a half tribes had been self-willed and regardless of one of the first duties - that

of not giving offense to the brethren, nor allowing their liberty to become a stumbling-block to others. For a

doubtful good they had committed an undoubted offense, the more unwarranted, that they had neither