This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.
Gibeonites and their deception.
In these chapters, and as I remember, most of Joshua, is about God giving the land to the people of Israel that he has promised their fathers before them. It can be seen as a pretty violent book of the Bible as there are a lot of battles and fights that go on to gain this land, and people going up against the Israelites so that they were forced to fight them.
Out of all of the people and lands that they came to, only one of these kingdoms was allowed to continue living after Israel came into the land, and even then, because they lied about who they were, God made them cutters of wood and drawers of water. Basically servants for the people of Israel.
One can’t know if these people had instead just gone to Israel and told them that they believed that they were God’ chosen people and they wished to form a friendship if they could have done that, From later passages, it seems that the reason Israel went so hard against all of these people wasn’t only because God had prepared them for destruction, but it was because the people were the ones starting the fights.
Maybe these people who ended up becoming servants could have been friends and at an equal level with the people of Israel, but because of their deception they ended up becoming servants. Punishment for the deception.
God is a just God.