Commentari biblici

IX.

PREPARATIONS OF THE CANAANITES FOR WAR.

(1, 2) These verses record the general preparation of the natives of Canaan for the last struggle with Joshua.

THE GIBEONITES MAKE PEACE WITH JOSHUA (Joshua 9:3-27).

(3) The inhabitants of Gibeon.—Hivites, as appears by Joshua 9:7. Gibeon was one member of a tetrapolis, or community of four cities, as is seen in Joshua 9:17. Their deception of Joshua and the Israelites on this occasion is a curious compensation for what was done by Simeon and Levi to the Hivites long before, when Jacob first came to Shechem from Padan-Aram (see Genesis 34). On that occasion, the inhabitants of a single city of the Hivites were put to the sword by Israel, by means of a stratagem; on this occasion, a stratagem saved four Hivite cities from destruction by Israel’s sword.

(4) They did work wilily.—Literally, and they also dealt with subtilty. The stratagem does not seem a very profound one, or one that would have been difficult to detect. But we may remember a fact of Israel’s experience which puts it in a somewhat different light. The Israelites themselves had come from a far country, but their raiment had not “waxed old upon them,” nor did “their feet swell,” these forty years. Of bread they had no need, when there was manna, and God gave them water for their thirst. Of worn garments and stale provisions they had no experience, and therefore, when the Gibeonites presented themselves in this extraordinary garb and guise, it is not unnatural that they were not detected by the eyes of Israel.

They . . . made as if they had been ambassadors.—The verb thus translated does not occur elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. By the alteration of a letter, the Targum, LXX., and some other versions make it mean, “they gat them provision.”

(5) Clouted—i.e., patched.

(7) Peradventure ye dwell among us; and how shall we make a league with you?—Literally, Peradventure thou art a dweller in the midst of me; and how shall I make a covenant with thee? The Israelites assume the ownership of Canaan as already theirs.

(9, 10) All that he did in Egypt, and . . . to the two kings of the Amorites.—The Gibeonites carefully abstain from referring to more recent exploits, as the passage of Jordan, the taking of Jericho and Ai; they mention only those which might have had time to reach them in the “far country” from which they asserted that they came.

(14) And the men took of their victuals.—And they accepted the men from (the appearance of) their provisions. This, which is the view taken in our marginal reading, seems to be the more probable interpretation, and follows the Targum. “The men” can hardly refer to any one but the ambassadors of the Gibeonites.

(16) Their neighbours, and they that dwelt among them.—Literally, and that they (the Gibeonites) were dwellers in the midst of him (Israel). (So Joshua 9:7.)