This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... dwell among us, and how shall we make a league with you /'' The Gibeonites persisted in their story, and told falsehood upon falsehood to support its plausibility. Joshua was without suspicion, and never thought of asking counsel of God (ver. 14), but "the men took of their victuals "--not, as some think, to test the truth of the Gibeonite story, but to pledge themselves after the Eastern manner to peace and friendship. The princes of the congregation ratified the engagement. The deception was quickly discovered on the Hebrews marching upon the Hivite cities. The question now was, Will the Hebrews stand by their treaty? The people murmured against the action of the princes. They probably argued that the princes were not bound to respect an engagement obtained by fraud. But if the princes were blameworthy for accepting the Gibeonite story without asking counsel of God, they were not at liberty to take advantage of their own carelessness and to repudiate their obligation. If their oath had bound them to a thing essentially wrong, they might have used the fraud of the Gibeonites as an argument for setting it aside. The princes, however, manifested an honourable strength of moral principle. That they were bound to observe their engagement appears from the fact that there was a famine in David''s time for three years because Saul had slain the Gibeonites (2 Sam. xxi. 1-10). The duty of the princes, under all the circumstances of the case, was to devise some method of respecting at once their oath and God''s purposes; and this was done by the decree that the Gibeonites should serve the Hebrews in all after ages in the more menial ofiices of the tabernacle. They were condemned to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, not to individual...