The Treaty Survives the Disguise

The verse sketches the country in three bands: the hill country, the lowland of the Shephelah, and the coast up toward Lebanon, the regions Moses named in Deuteronomy 1:7. Six peoples are listed; the Girgashites of the usual seven are missing.

“With one accord” is literally “with one mouth”, the phrase Ahab’s messenger uses when he urges Micaiah to agree with the other prophets (1 Kings 22:13). The kings speak with one voice, and the next verse shows one city that does not.

Gibeon is identified with el-Jib, about six miles north of Jerusalem. Excavators there found a great rock-cut pool, perhaps “the pool of Gibeon” of 2 Samuel 2:13, and jar handles stamped with the name gbn, which settled the identification.

“Wilily” is ormah, cunning, from the root of the serpent who was “more subtil” (Genesis 3:1). The Hebrew adds “they also”: Israel had just taken Ai by a trick, and Gibeon answers with one of its own. “Made as if they had been ambassadors” renders an obscure verb; a one letter change gives “took provisions”.

“Clouted” means patched; a clout was a piece of cloth. “Mouldy” is niqqudim, crumbled or speckled, the word for the biscuits Jeroboam’s wife carried to the prophet (1 Kings 14:3, “cracknels”). Every item, from the feet up, tells the same lie.

Covenants with the peoples of the land had been forbidden outright: “Thou shalt make no covenant with them” (Exodus 23:32; Deuteronomy 7:2). The Gibeonites ask for exactly that, a berit, and they ask it at Gilgal, the camp of the circumcision and the Passover.

The Gibeonites were Hivites, the people of Hamor and Shechem in Genesis 34:2, whose city had once been deceived by Jacob’s sons into a covenant of circumcision. This time the Hivites do the deceiving. “Peradventure” means perhaps.

“We are thy servants” was the formula of vassals. In the Amarna letters, written to Pharaoh by Canaanite city rulers in the fourteenth century BC, the writers call themselves “your servant” and “the dust under your feet”. Joshua asks two questions, and neither is answered in this verse.

Solomon’s temple prayer imagines exactly such a visitor: “a stranger... that cometh out of a far country for thy name’s sake” (1 Kings 8:41). The Gibeonites present themselves as that pilgrim. “Fame” is shema, report, what has been heard.

The titles are exact: Sihon “king of Heshbon”, Og “which was at Ashtaroth”, as in Deuteronomy 1:4. Ashtaroth took its name from the goddess Astarte. The envoys know the history east of the Jordan in detail and say nothing of the west.

Gibeon’s envoys are sent by “our elders and all the inhabitants”, not by a king. In a land of city kings, Gibeon seems to have been governed by elders, though 10:2 calls it “a great city, as one of the royal cities”. The envoys are not princes but delegates.

Verses 12 and 13 are a demonstration, full of pointing words: “this our bread”, “these bottles”, “these our garments”. The bread was “hot”, fresh from the oven, when they set out; now it is dry. They offer their food as a witness.

Wine bottles were goatskins, which stretch as new wine ferments and crack with age; the image behind the saying about new wine in old bottles (Matthew 9:17). Gibeon was in fact about twenty miles from Gilgal, a day’s hard walk uphill.

“At the mouth of the LORD” is the formula for asking through the priest. Numbers 27:21 had laid down how Joshua was to seek guidance: he would stand before Eleazar the priest, “who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the LORD”. Here no one does.

“Princes of the congregation” are the nesiim, the tribal chiefs listed in Numbers 1:16. The whole treaty has one clause, “to let them live”, the same verb used of Rahab, whom Joshua “saved alive” (6:25).

“Neighbours” is qerovim, the near ones, the exact opposite of the “far country” they claimed. “Among them” is beqirbo, in its midst, the phrase used in 7:13 of the banned thing inside the camp. Three days is all the deception lasted.

The four cities formed a small league. Kirjath-jearim later kept the ark for twenty years after the Philistines returned it (1 Samuel 7:1–2), and Beeroth was the home town of the two men who murdered Saul’s son Ish-bosheth (2 Samuel 4:2).

“Murmured” is lun, the wilderness verb for grumbling against Moses and Aaron (Exodus 16:2). This is its first appearance west of the Jordan. The complaint is aimed not at the Gibeonites but at Israel’s own leaders.

Psalm 15:4 describes the man who may dwell in God’s tabernacle as one who “sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not”. The princes repeat the full name of the oath, “by the LORD God of Israel”, as their whole defence.

“Wrath” is qetsef, the anger that fell on the whole congregation after Achan’s theft, as Joshua 22:20 recalls. Breaking an oath sworn in God’s name is treated as a sin that could bring the same on everyone.

Ezra 2:43 and 8:20 mention the Nethinim, “given ones”, temple servants of foreign origin; Jewish tradition connected them with the Gibeonites. “As the princes had promised them” may mean the princes’ promise of life, now given its terms.

“Beguiled” is rimmah, the verb Jacob threw at Laban the morning after his wedding: “wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?” (Genesis 29:25). The Gibeonites have done to Israel what Laban did to Jacob: presented one thing and delivered another.

Joshua’s words echo Noah’s curse on Canaan: “a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Genesis 9:25). “None of you be freed from being bondmen” is literally “there shall not be cut off from you a servant”: the service passes down through every generation.

“Certainly told” is a doubled verb, it was surely told. Their words paraphrase Deuteronomy 7:1–2. Moab had been “sore afraid” of Israel with the same phrase (Numbers 22:3) and hired Balaam; Gibeon, equally afraid, sends envoys with old bread.

“Good and right” is Deuteronomy’s pair, hattov vehayyashar, “that which is good and right in the sight of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 12:28). The Gibeonites submit to Joshua in the vocabulary of Israel’s own law.

“Delivered them” is natsal, the rescuing verb. Joshua protects the Gibeonites from his own people’s anger. The next chapter will turn this around: attacked by five kings, Gibeon will send to Joshua for rescue, and he will come.

“The place which he should choose” is Deuteronomy’s phrase for the central sanctuary (12:5). The tabernacle later stood at Gibeon itself (1 Chronicles 16:39; 21:29), and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings at “the great high place” there (1 Kings 3:4).