Albert Barnes Commentary Joshua 9:22

"And Joshua called for them, and he spake unto them, saying, Wherefore have ye beguiled us, saying, We are very far from you; when ye dwell among us?" — Joshua 9:22 (ASV)

Were the Israelites bound to respect an oath thus procured by fraud? Were they right in doing so? Dr. Sanderson (“Works,” vol. iv. 4 pp. 269, 300, Oxford edition), answers these questions affirmatively; and rightly so, since the oath, though unlawfully taken, was not an oath to do an unlawful thing, that is, a thing in itself unlawful. It was the carelessness of the Israelites themselves that betrayed them into this league.

It was therefore their duty, when they found themselves entrapped in this unlawful covenant, to devise means by which they might respect both their own oath and God’s purposes as indicated in His injunctions (Deuteronomy 7:2) against sparing the Canaanites. This was accomplished by granting their lives to the Gibeonites but reducing them to a servile condition, which might be expected to disable them from influencing the Israelites to do wrong. It may be added that if the Israelites had broken their oath, taken solemnly in the Name of the Lord, they would have brought that Name into contempt among the pagan; and, while punishing perfidy in others, would have themselves, the Lord’s people, incurred the reproach of perjury. The result showed that Joshua and the princes judged rightly in this matter.

God gave Israel a notable victory, crowned with special miracles, over the kings who were allied against Gibeon because of the treaty made with Israel (Joshua 10:4, 8, 13); and God punished as a national act of bloodguilt the slaughter of the Gibeonites by Saul, which was a distinct violation of the covenant previously mentioned (compare 2 Samuel 21:1). This sparing of the Gibeonites, as well as the previous sparing of Rahab and her household, must be borne in mind when the massacre of the Canaanites by Joshua and the Israelites is discussed.