Joshua 9

 

This is a curious story among all the fighting. A tribe, the Gibeonites, come to Joshua’s camp to make a peace treaty. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? But we need to go back to Deuteronomy Chapter 7 to get the background. There the Israelites are told not to make treaties with tribes in the Promised Land. The reason for this is that if they do, they will end up intermarrying with these tribes and they will be turned from the one true God and end up worshipping idols, false gods. And when we read on in the Old Testament that is exactly what happened.

 

So the Gibeonites pretended to be a tribe far away and tricked Joshua and the Israelites into making a treaty with them. But their ruse was discovered. The problem for Joshua was that he had painted himself into a corner. If they don’t kill the Gibeonites they disobey God’s instructions in Deuteronomy 7. If they do kill them, they break the oath that they made to the Gibeonites which they made in God’s name. Either way they dishonour God.

 

The heart of the problem is given in Verse 14, ‘The men of Israel did not enquire of the Lord’. We have seen this before haven’t we? At the battle of Ai they went ahead without consulting the Lord. Here, they ignored the word of God. And isn’t it interesting that the Gibeonites knew the word of God better that God’s own people. That is something for us to bear in mind – the enemies of God often know God’s word very well and we can think of when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, Satan was well versed in the word of God. The incentive for us is to know God’s word and to enquire of the Lord rather than rely on our own thoughts.

 

O what peace we often forfeit

O what needless pain we bear

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer

 

Another thing to come out of this passage is the use of God’s name. Joshua bound himself to a promise because he made that promise under an oath in God’s name. Breaking that oath would have dishonoured God’s name. We don’t often make oaths in God’s name these days but we should still be aware of using his name in vain. The way of the world is to misuse the name of God, to use ‘Jesus’ as a swear word. Bur we should make a point of respecting and honouring the name of our Lord and being noticeably different to the people around us, living by a different standard.