They answered Joshua, and said, Because it was certainly told your servants, how that Yahweh your God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; therefore we were sore afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing.
"Servants should be taken in the most pejorative sense here. As woodcutters and water carriers the Gibeonites will perform only menial services (see Deuteronomy 29:11)." [Note: Woudstra, p. 164.] 