Today, I am reading and commenting on  Joshua 21-22.

For the last few days I have been commenting on how much of what was being described appears to me to have happened before the end of Chapter 11 where it says, “Then the land had rest from war.”  I believe that Chapter 22 describes wat happened immediately after that verse: the warriors of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh crossed back over the Jordan River to the east side.  In any case, the warriors returning to their homes east of the Jordan built an altar as a  monument declaring unity between themselves and their kindred settling west of the Jordan.  The other tribes took this altar as a declaration of separation both from themselves and from their God.  From there this story becomes an example of how to deal with conflict.  The tribes west of the Jordan were angry, they thought the tribes east of the Jordan were rejecting them and their God as not “good enough”, and they believed the actions of the tribes east of the Jordan would negatively impact them.  However, instead of immediately going to war in order to protect themselves and punish the eastern tribes, they selected a delegation to speak with them and find out what they were doing, offering a solution if the eastern tribes had a legitimate reason for rejecting them.  When the delegation came to the eastern tribes, they could have taken it as an insult and immediately mustered to make war on those who showed such little trust in them.  After all, the eastern tribes had just returned from spending a generation fighting alongside their brothers now living to the west of the Jordan River.  But that is not how they reacted.  Instead they explained the purpose of the altar which they had built, they told the delegates that the altar had been built as a declaration unity between the tribes living east of the Jordan and the tribes living west of the Jordan, not as a declaration of independence from them.  Because both sides were willing to talk, and to listen, misunderstandings were resolved and peace was obtained.  Of course, peace would likely not have been possible if the eastern tribes had actually intended what the western tribes thought they intended.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.