Joshua 9 Bible study: Moldy bread and a sworn oath

The Law spoke of two kinds of cities. For a city Israel drew near to fight, it said, "proclaim peace to it" (Deuteronomy 20:10), and "Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far off from you, which are not of the cities of these nations" (Deuteronomy 20:15). Of the peoples of the land, "the Hivite" among them (Deuteronomy 7:1), it said, "You shall make no covenant with them" (Deuteronomy 7:2). The Gibeonites' story puts them among the cities far off: "We have come from a far country. Now therefore make a covenant with us" (9:6), and again, "Your servants have come from a very far country" (9:9). The men of Israel's question to "the Hivites" is the one Deuteronomy 7:2 raises: "What if you live among us? How could we make a covenant with you?" (9:7) (tap covenant). When the truth is out, Joshua asks, "Why have you deceived us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you live among us?" (9:22) (tap far). In Hebrew, very far from you there has the same three words as very far off from you in Deuteronomy 20:15: far, from you and very. The chapter doesn't say the Gibeonites knew Deuteronomy 20. It says what they had heard: "how the LORD your God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you" (9:24).

Joshua 9:19→leads toMatthew 23:21-22

When the congregation murmured, the princes answered, "We have sworn to them by the LORD, the God of Israel. Now therefore we may not touch them" (9:19). Jesus said, "Woe to you, you blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing…’" (Matthew 23:16), and "He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who has been living in it. He who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it" (Matthew 23:21-22). Jesus doesn’t cite Joshua 9, so setting them side by side is a reading. Some hear one point in both: an oath reaches the One it is sworn by, and can’t be counted as nothing. Others read Jesus’ words in their own setting, a woe on "blind guides" (Matthew 23:16) and their rules about which oaths bind, and don’t look back to Joshua 9.

שָׁאַלsha'alsay sha-AL

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "ask, inquire". Strong's: "to inquire; by implication, to request; by extension, to demand". "The men sampled their provisions, and didn’t ask counsel from the LORD’s mouth" (9:14). The WEB's ask counsel is this one verb (tap mouth). The Law had set out how Joshua was to ask: Eleazar the priest "shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the LORD" (Numbers 27:21), where inquire is this verb. Isaiah uses it with mouth too, of people who go down to Egypt "without asking for my advice" (Isaiah 30:2).