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22 The Lord is the greatest God! We ask him to be our witness, because he knows whether or not we were rebellious or unfaithful when we built that altar. If we were unfaithful, then we pray that God won't rescue us today. Let us tell you why we built that altar, 23 and we ask the Lord to punish us if we are lying. We didn't build it so we could turn our backs on the Lord. We didn't even build it so we could offer animal or grain sacrifices to please the Lord or ask his blessing.

24-25 We built that altar because we were worried. Someday your descendants might tell our descendants, “The Lord made the Jordan River the boundary between us Israelites and you people of Reuben and Gad. The Lord is Israel's God, but you're not part of Israel, so you can't take part in worshiping the Lord.”

Your descendants might say that and try to make our descendants stop worshiping and obeying the Lord.

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