Joshua9chapter 9

Joshua 9:1-2

The kings on this side Jordan hear what the kings of 5:1 heard, and where those hearts melted these men combine. The six nations named here are the six of Exodus 3:8 and Deuteronomy 20:17, which is the list the ban was written against. Their answer to the news stands first in the chapter so it can be weighed against Gibeon's answer two verses later, since both are reacting to the same report.

Joshua 9:3-5

Gibeon hears about Jericho and Ai, the two towns the reader has just watched fall, and answers with a lie instead of an army. The word rendered wilily comes from the root behind the subtilty ascribed to the serpent at Genesis 3:1, and the King James translators kept the sense of craft rather than of wisdom. Every prop is chosen because it ages: sacks, wine skins, shoes, garments and bread, five separate witnesses to a long road, with the bread put last because it is the item a man would examine first.

Joshua 9:6-8

They ask for a league at Gilgal, and the phrase they lead with, come from a far country, is lifted straight out of the law they are working around. Deuteronomy 20:10-15 permits terms of peace with a city very far off, and Deuteronomy 20:16-18 orders the opposite for the cities of these nations, so the entire disguise turns on one clause of one statute. The men of Israel see it and say it aloud in verse 7, which means the danger was named before the oath was sworn and the objection was met with evidence rather than with inquiry.

Joshua 9:9-10

They credit the name of the Lord thy God, cite Egypt and the two kings east of Jordan, and stop there. Verse 3 says what they actually heard was Jericho and Ai, so the recent news is exactly what they leave out, since a traveller months from home could not yet carry it. Rahab's confession at 2:9-10 names the same two items, the drying of the Red Sea and Sihon and Og, which makes this speech a copy of a true one.

Joshua 9:11-13

The elders and the whole country are invoked and the country is never named, which is the first thing a real embassy would state. The bread, the wine skins, the garments and the shoes are each produced in turn as proof, so the props carry the argument and the men only point at them. Nothing in the speech can be tested without asking somebody outside the room.

Joshua 9:14

One clause at the end of the verse carries the chapter. The mouth of the Lord was a working provision rather than a figure of speech, since Numbers 27:21 appointed Eleazar to ask counsel by Urim for Joshua by name, so the means was standing in the camp unused. Readers divide over the first clause, some taking the men eating of the victuals as the shared meal that sealed a treaty, others as an inspection of the bread that got the answer the eye gives. On either reading the evidence was weighed and the Lord was not asked.

Joshua 9:15-16

Joshua makes peace and the princes swear, and the oath is by the Lord God of Israel, which verses 18 and 19 give as the reason nothing can afterward be undone. Three days is the whole life of the deception, so it fails almost at once and still binds. Joshua covers the ground from Gilgal to Gibeon in a single night march at 10:9, which is how near the far country was.

Joshua 9:17-19

Four towns come in with Gibeon and each has a later history: Kirjath-jearim keeps the ark twenty years at 1 Samuel 7:1-2, Beeroth produces the men who kill Ishbosheth at 2 Samuel 4:2, and Gibeon itself holds the tabernacle at 1 Chronicles 16:39 and hears Solomon's dream at 1 Kings 3:4-5. The congregation murmurs against the princes, using the verb the wilderness chapters use of this same people against Moses. The princes make no case that the treaty was fair, and rest the whole answer on having sworn by the Lord God of Israel.

Joshua 9:20-21

Lest wrath be upon us gives the princes their reason, and it treats an oath obtained by fraud as binding on the men who swore it. Psalm 15:4 states the principle in the same terms, of a man who sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not, and 2 Samuel 21:1-2 records the three years of famine that followed Saul breaking this exact oath generations later. Hewers of wood and drawers of water is a phrase already in use, since Deuteronomy 29:11 applies it to the lowest class standing inside the covenant assembly, so the sentence sets the Gibeonites at the bottom of Israel rather than beyond its edge.

Joshua 9:22-23

Joshua charges them with the deceit and pronounces them cursed, and the curse he gives is servitude. Verse 7 calls them Hivites, and the Hivite is a son of Canaan at Genesis 10:17, so the words land on the line Noah cursed at Genesis 9:25 in the very shape Noah used, a servant of servants. The place of the service comes in the same breath, for the house of my God, which fastens them to the sanctuary rather than to a private master.

Joshua 9:24-25

Their answer is Rahab's answer: they heard what the Lord commanded Moses, and they believed it. Deuteronomy 7:1-2 is the command they are quoting back, and fear of it drove the whole performance, which they admit without offering an excuse. We are in thine hand puts them where Rahab put herself at 2:12-13, and the two Canaanite households that live through this book are the two that took the report as true.

Joshua 9:26-27

Joshua keeps them alive and fixes their labour at the altar of the Lord, in the place which he should choose, which is the wording Deuteronomy 12:5 uses of the sanctuary before there is one. The men who lied to stay clear of Israel spend their generations at its centre. Ezra 2:43-58 and Ezra 8:20 list the Nethinim, given for the service of the Levites, and older writers including Gill read them as this people's descendants, a link the text of Ezra leaves unstated. The league also sets up the next chapter, since Adoni-zedek attacks Gibeon at 10:1-5 because of it, so the long day comes out of a treaty made without counsel.