Joshua 22:27

27 But for a testimony between us and you, and our posterity and yours, that we may serve the Lord, and that we may have a right to offer both holocausts, and victims and sacrifices of peace offerings: and that your children to morrow may not say to our children: You have no part in the Lord.

Joshua 22:27 Meaning and Commentary

Joshua 22:27

But [that] it [may be] a witness between us and you, and our
generations after us
That we are one people, worship one God, and serve at one altar, of which this built was a resemblance, and would put them in mind of it:

that we might do the service of the Lord before him;
in the tabernacle, and at the altar, in the place where he had chosen to put his name and dwell:

with our burnt offerings, and with our sacrifices, and with our peace
offerings;
to be brought at stated times, or as occasion required:

that your children may not say to our children, in time to come, ye
have no part in the Lord;
nor right to his altar, and so forbid them offering their sacrifices on it; or

``have no part in the Word of the Lord,''

as the Targum; the Messiah, whose sacrifice was typified by the sacrifices of the legal dispensation, and all such, who offered theirs in the faith of that, had a part in it, and their sins were expiated by it.

Joshua 22:27 In-Context

25 The Lord hath put the river Jordan for a border between us and you, O ye children of Ruben, and ye children of Gad: and therefore you have no part in the Lord. And by this occasion your children shall turn away our children from the fear of the Lord. We therefore thought it best,
26 And said: Let us build us an altar, not for holocausts, nor to offer victims,
27 But for a testimony between us and you, and our posterity and yours, that we may serve the Lord, and that we may have a right to offer both holocausts, and victims and sacrifices of peace offerings: and that your children to morrow may not say to our children: You have no part in the Lord.
28 And if they will say so, they shall answer them: Behold the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made, not for holocausts, nor for sacrifice, but for a testimony between us and you.
29 God keep us from any such wickedness that we should revolt from the Lord, and leave off following his steps, by building an altar to offer holocausts, and sacrifices, and victims, beside the altar of the Lord our God, which is erected before his tabernacle.
The Douay-Rheims Bible is in the public domain.