“But when the inhabitants of Giv‘ah heard what Y’hoshua had done to Yericho and ‘Ai, they developed a clever deception: they made themselves look as if they had been on a long journey by putting old sacks on their donkeys and taking used wineskins that had burst and been mended back together.”-Joshua 9:3-4
You know, it seems like a lot of folks operate under the assumption that ancient cultures were backwards, isolated and completely lacking in any sophisticated means of communication.
Actually, nothing could have been further from the truth.
News in those days spread like wildfire.
All of the nation-states in the Land of Canaan knew that Israel was out to get them because they had a network of spies stretching out across the land and there were military outstations set up at the borders of each nation-state.
Why do you think the 6 nations we’ve been talking about in the last couple of lessons banded together so quickly after Israel defeated the city of Ai?
It’s because news traveled quickly and they realized in due time they would also be eliminated by Joshua and his army unless they did something.
They were well aware they only had 2 choices: fight or flight.
The hundreds of thousands of them would either have to leave what had been their homeland for hundreds of years or be killed.
However, from verse 3, we’re told of a people group called the Gibeonites who cleverly devised an option that involved no fighting AND no hightailing it out of the land.
Incidentally, if it was me and these were the only 2 options I had, I probably would have hightailed it out of the land and started a business in another country (come to think of it, that’s exactly what I’m doing right now).
Anyways, let’s get back to Gibeon.
So here’s the situation: Gibeon was a relatively tiny alliance of towns and villages who decided there was no way in hell they were going to attempt to battle God’s army and they also decided they didn’t want to leave their homeland.
So what to do?
They decided to trick Joshua and his leaders into thinking they actually weren’t native inhabitants of the land of Canaan…that instead they were really foreigners who had travelled a far distance to make peace with Israel.
Why in the world did they think this idea would work?
Because they heard that God’s instructions to Israel was to destroy all the citizens who lived inside of Canaan and…
…NOT FOREIGNERS WHO HAD TRAVELED THERE FROM A FARAWAY PLACE.
They were also aware that God had forbidden Israel from making any peace treaties with any of the inhabitants of the land (an order that still stands today by the way).
The Gibeonites knew darn well their options were pretty much the same as everyone else living in the region.
They either had to fight or leave.
Yet after scratching their heads for some time, they came up with a third option.
They would fool Joshua and his army into thinking they were originally from an area OUTSIDE of the Promised Land and enter into a treaty with Israel.
And then VOILA!
If they did that, they reasoned Israel would be handcuffed by the treaty they had entered into and thus could avoid being slaughtered while still remaining in their homeland.
So what went down?
Well, that’s what we’ll be getting into the next time we meet.
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