Joshua 9 Study Notes

9:15 That Joshua established peace with the Gibeonites demonstrates his own complicity in the actions. The reference to “peace” and the swearing of an oath by the leaders of the community bound Israel into a treaty relationship with the Gibeonites that could not be broken.

9:16 The phrase three days may suggest a literal three days such as seems to occur in 1:11; 2:16,22, or it may imply an indeterminate period of more than a second day.

9:17 Having discovered the ruse of the Gibeonites, the Israelites set out on the third day and reached the Gibeonite cities on that same day. Like Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim lie a few miles north of Jerusalem and are close by one another in the territory that would later be assigned to the tribe of Benjamin.

9:18-19 The two references to the oath that the leaders had made surround the statement that the whole community grumbled against the leaders. The verb grumble and this refers elsewhere almost exclusively to the complaints of the Israelites against Moses’s leadership and against God. Its appearance here may suggest the same negative attitude of Israel as that in the wilderness generation. However, this grumbling against the leaders had a point because the present leadership did not seek God’s counsel, and they thereby foolishly bound Israel to a treaty with a Canaanite people group.

9:20 The leaders were unwilling to violate their oath and thereby compound their wrongdoing with a second sin.

9:21 Deuteronomy 29:11 implied that aliens living in the land of Israel should fulfill the roles of woodcutters and water carriers.

9:22-23 Joshua pronounced a curse against the Gibeonites for causing Israel to disobey God’s command to destroy all the inhabitants of Canaan who did not leave the land.

9:24-26 How the Gibeonites knew of God’s promise is not known (Ex 32:13; Dt 11:25; 19:8), but Rahab also had such knowledge (Jos 2:9). That the Gibeonites became Israel’s servants meant that they were responsible to Israel and that Israel was also responsible for Gibeon. Note Gibeon’s appeal to whatever you think is right (lit “as is good and as is right in your eyes”) is the same appeal Jeremiah uses in Jr 26:14-15. Apparently the animosity between Israel and Gibeon continued into Saul’s day (2Sm 21:1-9).

9:27 The deliverance of a people such as the Gibeonites is not unique to Joshua. In the ancient world, many peoples offered themselves as slaves rather than face extinction at the hands of a superior army. The establishment of the Lord’s altar at the place he would choose duplicates Dt 12:5 and the command that Israel should worship God only at the place where he directed they should build an altar.