John Calvin Commentary Joshua 9:6

"And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him, and to the men of Israel, We are come from a far country: now therefore make ye a covenant with us." — Joshua 9:6 (ASV)

And they went to Joshua, etc. I have said that in strict law, a covenant of this description was null and void. For when they obtain their request, what is stipulated is only that they should be kept safe, provided they come from a distant and remote region of the globe?

And the more often they reiterate the same falsehood, the more they annul an agreement elicited by fraud, since its true meaning only amounts to this: that the Israelites will offer no harm to a foreign people, living at a remote distance. This is shown to be especially the meaning from the fact that the Israelites expressly exclude all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. They could not, therefore, gain anything by the fraud.

Nor are they assisted any further by making a deceptive pretext of the name of God, and thus throwing a kind of mist over the mind of Joshua. They pretend that they had come in the name of God, as if they were professing to give glory to God, even the God of Israel, since there is a tacit rejection of the superstitions to which they had been accustomed. For if it is true that they had come, moved by faith in the miracles which had been performed in Egypt, they concede supreme power to the God of Israel, though to them a God unknown.