Josh 9 is an example Latter-day Saint apologists cite as an example of prophetic errancy. As Jeff Lindsay writes:
The Bible gives examples of prophets and apostles who were
mortal and fallible, with obvious mistakes having been made by Jonah (shirking
his duty), Moses (not circumcising his son), and Peter (denying Christ three
times). But can real prophets be fooled by deceivers? Certainly. Joshua was fooled by the men of Gibeon, who came in disguise as if from a distant
country when they were locals who normally would have been treated as enemies.
In that story, given in Joshua 9:3-27, Joshua was deceived. He was a prophet, but he
fell for the trick of the Gibeonites. (Jeff Lindsay, LDSFAQ:
The LDS Concept of Modern Prophets)
Commenting on the Gibeonites’
ruse, Robert P. Gordon wrote that:
When
they arrive at the Israelite camp (v. 6), the Gibeonites announce with some emphasis,
as reflected in the word-order, “From a far country we have come”, and
they ask, bluntly and without further preamble, for a treaty with Israel, using
the expression kãrat le,
which occurs in Deut. 7:2 in the ban on the making of treaties with such as the
Gibeonites (cf. also Exod. 23:32; 34:12). They are described by their tribal
affiliation of “Hivite” in verse 7, doubtless to emphasize the fact of their ineligibility
for such treatment (cf. v. 1). It may, or may not, be significant that there is
no reference to language differences between the two parties. Josh. 9 would
not, in any case, be exceptional among the narratives of the Old Testament in
remaining silent about the language factor. We are simply not to know whether,
on their own description of themselves, the Gibeonites should have spoken in a
language unfamiliar to the Israelites.
The
Israelites’ response in verse 7 and Joshua’s more direct questioning in verse 8
raise the possibility of detection. Joshua’s question noticeably never does get
a straight answer. Thereafter the Gibenoites unravel their fictive skein (vv.
9-13). First they emphasize that they have come from a very distant land
(c. 9; cf. v. 6). Like Rahab and the inhabitants of Jericho (2:9-11), they have
heard of the discomfiture of the Egyptians and the defeat of the Amorite
kingdoms of Heshbon and Bashan, and are alarmed. (In 2 Sam. 21:2 the Gibeonites
themselves are described as belonging to “the remnant of the Amorites”.)
Whether their failure to update the story to include Jericho and Ai is part of
the act—in verse 3 it is when they hear what Joshua had done to Jericho and
Ai that they take action (v. 4)—or simply reflects the importance of Sihon
and Og in the conquest tradition [40] must be left an open question. The
political set-up implied in their statement in verse 11 does not involve a
monarchy (cf. 10:2 [“like one of the royal cities”])—contrast the references
to Canaanite kings in 9:1 and in chapter 10—and, with its elders and popular representation
of some sort (“all those living in our country”) might even fetch a parallel with
premonarchical Israel as described in Joshua-Samuel. They may, according to Schäfer-Lichtenberger,
be wanting to bring the comparison to the Israelites’ attention in order to win
their sympathy. At the least, they succeed in making themselves sound different
from the Canaanites. Presumably, by implying that their elders had remained at
home (v. 11) they seek to reinforce the impression of distance travelled:
elders would normally be expected to form at least part of such a delegation,
but elders might not be expected to travel such a long distance as these people
have come.
One
of the most obvious features of the narrative is the amount of overkill
attributed to the Gibeonites in their desperation to avoid the exterminatory “ban”.
This applies specially to their appeal to their food supply which,
surprisingly, they have not been able to replenish en route. They still
have the bread baked for them at their home, before they set out (v. 12)! And
then they quote their elders back home as having said that they should “take
provisions for the journey” (v. 11), this is almost a give-away. If they were
setting out on a journey of the length that they suggest, the advice is
superfluous. The closest phraseological parallels are in the Joseph story in
Genesis, but these occur in statements of fact (45:21, 23) or in a command from
Joseph to his servants to provide his brothers with food for their journey home
(42:24). Here in Josh. 9 the elders’ advice serves to draw attention to the
food that will prove crucial to their deceiving of the Israelites (see v. 14).
Without
much hesitancy the Israelites respond to this plea for a treaty; two or three
features of a typical treaty may be represented in verses 14-45. The chief uncertainty
in the text relates to the Israelites’ “taking (some) of” the Gibeonites’ food
(v. 14). Is this the Israelites testing their claim to have come from a
distance? Or is it a symbolic act of sharing food, amounting at its most formal
to a conventual meal (cf. Gen. 26:30-1) (note that the meal precedes the
oath-taking in Genesis 26, just as it would in this instance. Cf. also the
treaty clause in the Esarhaddon vassal-treaty texts: “you will not make a
treaty by serving food at table, by drinking from a cup . . .”)? Tasting bread
that was obviously “dry and crumbling” would have added nothing to what the
Israelites knew, or at least thought they knew. On the other hand, if this was
a sharing of food as part of a treaty ratification ceremony, the Israelite
participants are not being shown in their best light. Intertextual reading of
verse 14 with Gen. 3 might even suggest comparison with the guilty eating of Eve
who “took (some) of” the fruit of the tree in the middle of Eden (Gen. 3:6). At
any rate, the use of the term “peace” and the ratification of the treaty by
oath—as also the implied agreement on mutual assistance against enemies (cf.
10:6)—are conventional aspects of treaty—and covenant-making, and their significance
in verse 15 is uncontroversial. The prior statement in verse 14 that the
Israelites “did not ask instruction from the Lord” is obviously intended to
carry a lot of weight in the narrative. From this oversight, it is implied, the
Israelites dug a put for themselves by carelessly entering into a treaty arrangement
contrary to their own law. (Robert P. Gordon, “Gibeonite Ruse and Israelite
Curse in Joshua 9,” in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Versions: Selected Essays of
Robert P. Gordon [Study for Old Testament Study Series; London: Routledge,
2016], 86-87)
Responding to a claim that the
Israelites were simply “play-acting” and knew the true identity of the
Gibeonites, and they simply did not wish to enact the “ban” (ḥerem)
against them, Gordon notes that:
Occasionally
it is suggested that in Josh. 9 the Israelites collude in their own deception,
presumably to avoid having to apply the “ban”. However, the writer has not left
us any clues that would support such an interpretation. In part, responses will
depend on how the composition of the chapter is envisaged. The second half (vv.
16-27) clearly does not support the idea of collusion. When the truth is discovered,
there is a strong inclination on the part of the mass of the Israelites (“the
whole assembly”, v. 18) to take revenge for the deception, which still leaves
the leadership, but only the leadership, as possibly having been tempted into
collusion. Nor does the statement that Joshua made a treaty with the Gibeonites
“to let them live” (v. 15) imply that this was consciously in breach of the law
of Deut. 20:16, according to which nothing that breathed was to be left alive
in the Canaanite cities. The decision is made to “keep alive” the Gibeonites
before their ruse is discovered, and the term by itself does not suggest a
policy the opposite of what was supposed to be followed. It occurs in the Rahab
story, which has none of the complications of the Gibeonites account as regards
the bona ides of the other covenant party (see 2:13; 6:25).
When
the Gibeonites’ deceit is discovered it becomes clear that they occupy a tetrapolis
(v. 17); the Israelites have been even more generous than they realized. The
rank and file of Israel complain against their leaders, and a resolution of
sorts is achieved by imposing on the offenders a menial function in relation to
the Israelite community (v. 21). The fact that the leaders propose a role in
relation to the community, whereas Joshua rules that they will be in service to
the Israelite sanctuary (v. 23), is commonly taken as evidence of composite
authorship. There is, nevertheless, a consistency about the leaders’ seeking to
pacify the “community” with an offer of domestic service, and Joshua’s formalizing
of the decision as a curse binding the Gibeonites to menial duties at the
shrine of the God whose displeasure has been incurred (v. 23). That the curse
relates directly to woodcutting and water-drawing is hardly in doubt. However,
if the MT vocalization is followed in verse 21, a translation such as that of NRSV
follows: “So they became hewers of wood and draws of water for all the
congregation, as the leaders had decided concerning them,” and this could be
taken to imply that the Gibeonites’ subservient role was decided at the time of
the original treaty-making (cf. Deut. 20:11; Josh. 16:10; 17:13; 1 Kgs. 9:21).
Even if this is the case, Joshua’s pronouncement in verse 23 still amounts to a
formal curse in which the sentence consists of the subservient business of
woodcutting and water-drawing. Verse 27, whatever its vintage, binds the
decisions in verses 21 (“for all the congregation”) and 23 (“for the house of
my God”) together in its summarizing comment on the episode of its
after-effects. The significance of imposed sentence and the curse will be the
subject of the next main section of this study.
Finally,
the Gibeonites’ response to Joshua (vv. 24-5) does indeed differ from Rahab’s
in putting stress on the “word” of God and not just the acts by which his dread
has fallen on the population of Canaan. However, the truly significant point is
that, whereas at their first encounter with the Israelites they could not
confess their fears, ostensibly they had no reason for such, once their trick
was uncovered they could own up to the real cause of the deception: the
knowledge that the Israelites were set up on the eradication of the Canaanite
tribes Once the confession was made, they could entrust their fate to Joshua
(v. 25), comfortable in the knowledge that their ill-gotten treaty would save
them alive. (Ibid., 88-89)
Josh 9, as Jeff Lindsay et al., note, is an explicit biblical
example of a prophet of God (Joshua) being deceived.