Charles Ellicott Commentary Joshua 9:4

"they also did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine-skins, old and rent and bound up," — Joshua 9:4 (ASV)

They did work wilily. —Literally, and they also dealt with subtlety. The stratagem does not seem very profound, or one that would have been difficult to detect.

But we may remember a fact of Israel’s experience that 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. They had no need of bread when there was manna, and God gave them water for their thirst.

Consequently, they had no experience of worn clothing and stale provisions. Therefore, when the Gibeonites presented themselves in this extraordinary garb and guise, it is not surprising 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, Septuagint, and some other versions make it mean, “they gat them provision.”