Holy Water, Boys
Holy Water, Boys
Joshua 9:22, 24-27a Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, “Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us?”… They answered Joshua, “Because … the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you. … And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.” So he … delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation.”
Take this from the Gibeonites: it’s better to be a waterboy in God’s family than a king in the devil’s.
We shouldn’t commend the Gibeonites for their deception, even though their deception was based on a desire to live in submission to God rather than die in opposition to Him. And I do believe that had they done the far braver thing, had they just come to Joshua in honest fashion, offering their city outright and pleading for mercy rather than striking a covenant under false pretense, God would’ve welcomed them without condition. But just as Abraham’s deception to Pharaoh and Jacob’s deception to Isaac and Judah’s deception to Jacob (when he covered Joseph’s cloak in blood and claimed that Joseph was killed by wild beasts) came back to nip them in the bud, so, too, these Gibeonites rightly pay a price for their cunning. After all, it’s never okay to think we can outwit the God of heaven and get away with it.
Nevertheless, I’m so grateful that Joshua not only allows them to live but actually bestows on them a worthy enterprise. Even though, by doing so, he sort of wedges himself between two covenants, pitting the latter against the former as it were, and leaving himself in an unenviable predicament as a result. But from this time onward, these Gibeonites will have a place in the family. No longer will they have to hide in costumes. Oh no! They’ve been unmasked! The fig leaves are off for good! The old has passed away and the new has come.
Call them lumberjacks for the LORD! Hail them waterboys for the Wellspring of life! And to think they were merely kings before.