Therefore said we
To prevent any such usage of our children, and that they might have a ready answer to give:
that it shall be, when they should [so] say unto us, or to our
generations, in time to come;
as above suggested, that they were a separate people from them, and had no interest in the Lord, nor right to his altar, nor concern in his worship:
that we may say [again];
in reply, that is, our posterity:
behold the pattern of the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made;
which exactly agrees with the Mosaic altar, and which they could never have framed in so exact a manner if they had not seen it, and served at it; wherefore this was a plain proof of their being originally worshippers of the same God, partakers of the same altar, and were in the faith, fellowship, and communion of Israel. According to Gussetius {n}, this was not the altar the Reubenites built, which the children of Israel would be bid to behold, but the Mosaic altar at the tabernacle or temple, which was the archetype and exemplar, according to which that of the Reubenites was formed; and therefore say not, come and behold, but behold the altar present before them, that of Moses, and acknowledge that to be a type and exemplar, which they had related, and so confess it to be a testimony of their mutual fellowship: and what they had made in imitation of it, which exactly answered to it, was
not for burnt offerings, nor for sacrifices;
of any sort, that was not the intention of erecting it:
but it [is] a witness between us and you;
that we worship the same God, and are of the same faith and fellowship.