Joshua 22 Bible study: A witness between us

Chapter 1 set the terms. Joshua reminded the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh that they were to help their brothers "until the LORD has given your brothers rest", and "Then you shall return to the land of your possession" (1:15). Now he calls the same three (22:1) and tells them they have done it: "You have not left your brothers these many days to this day" (22:3). And the LORD has done his part: "Now the LORD your God has given rest to your brothers, as he spoke to them. Therefore now return and go to your tents" (22:4). Chapter 21 had just said it: "The LORD gave them rest all around" (21:44). Numbers tells how the land east of the Jordan was first given: it was the children of Reuben and Gad who asked Moses for it (Numbers 32:1-5), and Moses gave it to them "and to the half-tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph" (Numbers 32:33). This chapter explains why only half of Manasseh goes home: "to the one half-tribe of Manasseh Moses had given inheritance in Bashan; but Joshua gave to the other half among their brothers beyond the Jordan westward" (22:7).

Joshua 22:27→leads toJohn 17:21

The eastern tribes built their altar so that the Jordan would not become a line between God's people, fearing a day when their children would be told, "You have no portion in the LORD" (22:27). They called it "a witness between us and you, and between our generations after us" (22:27), and named it "A Witness Between Us that the LORD is God" (22:34). Praying for "those also who will believe in me through their word" (John 17:20), Jesus asked "that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me" (John 17:21). Jesus doesn't cite Joshua 22, so setting them side by side is a reading. Some hear the same concern in both: God's people kept one across what divides them, and that oneness bearing witness, in Joshua between the tribes and their generations that the LORD is God (22:27, 22:34), in John to the world that the Father sent Jesus. Others keep the two apart: the altar is a witness between Israel's tribes, not to the world, and Jesus prays for a oneness "even as we are one" (John 17:22), which an altar by a river doesn't describe.

עֵדedsay EID

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "witness". Strong's: "concretely, a witness; abstractly, testimony". The altar is "a witness between us and you, and between our generations after us" (22:27), and "a witness between us and you" (22:28). At the end the children of Reuben and Gad "named the altar", and the WEB prints its name as "A Witness Between Us that the LORD is God" (22:34). In the Hebrew no separate one-word name follows "named the altar": what follows is a sentence with this word for witness in it, and the WEB prints that sentence as the altar's name. The verse names the children of Reuben and Gad; the half-tribe of Manasseh, with them through the chapter (22:21), isn't named here, and the text doesn't say why. Joshua has the word five times: these three, and twice when the people answer Joshua at Shechem, "You are witnesses against yourselves… We are witnesses" (24:22). In Gilead long before, Laban said of the heap, "This heap is witness between me and you today" (Genesis 31:48).