Joshua 22:10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

When they came Or, They came (for the word when is not in the Hebrew) to the borders of Jordan It is thought by many that גלילות, Geliloth, here rendered borders, was the name of a place. The children of Reuben built there an altar This seems, at first sight, to import, that they built this altar before they went over Jordan, in the land of Canaan; but the Hebrew particle שׁם, sham, relates to time as well as place, and may be translated then as well as there. Examples of which may be found in Proverbs 8:27, compared with Joshua 22:30; Ecclesiastes 3:17; and Isaiah 48:16. And thus it is here to be interpreted, that before they went any farther, while they were yet on the bank of Jordan, they erected this altar on the borders of their own country; for so the next verse teaches us to expound the passage, and will admit of no other sense, where it is said they had built this altar, not in, but over against the land of Canaan. Indeed it is not likely that they would have ventured to erect it in the territory of the other tribes. Nor would it have answered their intention to have built it there, which was to show, by this monument, that Jordan made no such separation between them and their brethren, but that they were one people with those in Canaan, where the altar of God was in Shiloh. See Joshua 22:28. Nor would there have been cause to suspect, as it appears there was from the following verses, that it was designed for sacrifice, if they had not built it among themselves. A great altar to see to Which made a very conspicuous appearance, being very high, and consequently visible afar off.