Joshua 22:12

12 all they came together in Shiloh (they all came together in Shiloh), (so) that they should go up, and fight against them.

Joshua 22:12 Meaning and Commentary

Joshua 22:12

And when the children of Israel heard [of it]
Of the building the altar in the above place, namely, the nine tribes and a half settled in the land of Canaan:

the whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered themselves
together at Shiloh;
where the tabernacle and altar of the Lord were, whose cause they undertook to avenge, being injured as they imagined by the altar the other tribes had built, and where they could consult the Lord by Urim and Thummim, if needful; hither they repaired from the several places around, where their tribes were settled; not the whole body of the people, but their heads and representatives:

to go up to war against them;
to consult about it, and to prepare for it, which they were obliged to do by the law of God, as in the case of a city, so of a tribe drawn aside to idolatry; and which they imagined was the case of these tribes, or at least what they had done had a tendency to apostasy from the true worship of God, which they were zealous to defend at the hazard of their lives, and though it should issue in an extirpation of one or more of their tribes; see ( Deuteronomy 13:12-16 ) .

Joshua 22:12 In-Context

10 And when they had come to the terms of (the) Jordan, into the land of Canaan, they builded beside (the) Jordan an altar of (the) greatest sight. (And when they had come to Geliloth, by the Jordan River, in the region of Gilgal, they built a great altar there by the river for all to see.)

11 And when the sons of Israel had heard this, and certain messengers had told (this) to them, that the sons of Reuben, and of Gad, and the half lineage of Manasseh, had builded an altar in the land of Canaan, on the heaps of (the) Jordan, against the sons of Israel, (And when the Israelites had heard of this, and certain messengers had told them, that the sons of Reuben, and of Gad, and of the eastern half of the tribe of Manasseh, had built an altar on the bank of the Jordan River, facing the Israelites in the land of Canaan,)

12 all they came together in Shiloh (they all came together in Shiloh), (so) that they should go up, and fight against them.

13 And in the meantime, they sent to them into the land of Gilead, Phinehas, the priest, the son of Eleazar, (And in the meantime, they sent Phinehas, the priest, the son of Eleazar, to those tribes in the land of Gilead,)

14 and ten princes with him; of each lineage one prince. (and ten leaders with him; one leader from each tribe.)