[2] According to Joshua 22, the eastern or Transjordanian tribes cross over the Jordan River after having assisted in the conquest of the land of Canaan.
This causes the "whole congregation of the Israelites" to prepare for war, but they first send to the Transjordanian tribes a delegation led by Phinehas.
They accuse the eastern tribes of making God angry and suggesting that their land may be unclean.
However the eastern tribes explained that they built it only as a testimony to their unity of religion (despite their being somewhat cut-off by the river), and not as a rival working altar (like the later calves set up by Jereboam).
Some textual scholars suspect that the name of the altar must have been dropped by a copyist, either deliberately or unintentionally.