Joshua 9:8-24

⁸And they said to Joshua, We be thy servants. To whom Joshua said, What men be ye, and from whence came ye?

⁹They answered, Thy servants came from a full far land in the name of thy Lord God; for we have heard the fame of his power, and all things which he did in Egypt,

¹⁰and to the two kings of Amorites beyond Jordan; to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, that were in Ashtaroth.

¹¹And the elder men and all the dwellers of our land said to us, Take ye meats in your hands, for the full long way; and go ye to them, and say ye, We be your servants; make ye bond of peace with us.

¹²And we took hot loaves, when we went out of our houses to come to you; now they be made dry and broken, for great eldness;

¹³we filled new bottles of wine; now they be broken and unsewed; the clothes and shoes, with which we be clothed, and which we have on our feet, be broken and well-nigh wasted, from the length of long way.

¹⁴Then they took of the meats of these men, and they asked not counsel of the Lord.

¹⁵And Joshua made peace with them. And when the bond of peace was made, he promised, that they should not be slain; and the princes of the multitude swore to them.

¹⁶And after three days of the bond of peace made, the men of Israel heard, that those men dwelled in nigh place, and that they should be soon among those men.

¹⁷And the sons of Israel moved their tents, and came in the third day into the cities of them, of which cities these be the names; Gibeon, and Chephirah, and Beeroth, and Kiriathjearim.

¹⁸And Israel destroyed not them, for the princes of the multitude had sworn to them in the name of the Lord God of Israel. Therefore all the common people grutched against the princes of Israel;

¹⁹and the princes answered to them, We swore to them in the name of the Lord God of Israel, and therefore we may not touch them;

²⁰but we shall do this thing to them; be they kept that they live, lest the ire of the Lord be stirred against us, if we forswear us to them;

²¹but so live they, that they hew trees, and bear waters, into the uses of all the multitude. And while they spake these things,

²²Joshua called Gibeonites, and said to them, Why would ye deceive us by fraud, that ye said, We dwell full far from you, since ye be in the midst of us?

²³Therefore ye shall be under cursing, and none shall fail of your generation, hewing trees and bearing waters, into the house of my God.

²⁴Which answered, It was told to us thy servants, that thy Lord God promised to Moses, his servant, that he should betake to you all the land, and should lose all the dwellers thereof; therefore we dreaded greatly, and purveyed to our lives, and we were compelled by your dread, and we took this counsel.