They said to him, From a very far country your servants are come because of the name of Yahweh your God: for we have heard the fame of him, and all that he did in Egypt,
"And the men took of their provision ..."  (Joshua 9:14). This means that Israel was completely deceived and that they ate a covenant meal with the Gibeonites, thus making a treaty with them.  "The men," mentioned here, were the princes of Israel, the leaders of the people.  Their eating of the provisions of the Gibeonites was not a casual thing at all, because, "This seems to refer to the meal that was a part of the treaty-making process in those days."[21]  After the princes of Israel had made a treaty and sealed it with a covenant meal, it was too late to back out of the agreement when they later discovered the deception.