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.
Ancient Near Easterners regarded all treaties as sacred agreements. [Note: Davis and Whitcomb, p. 63.] If Israel had violated this oath she would have brought great reproach on herself and her God. Israel’s leaders were wise not to break their promise. [Note: See F. Charles Fensham, "The Treaty Between Israel and the Gibeonites," Biblical Archaeologist 27:3 (1964):98-100.] Later in Israel’s history King Saul put some of the Gibeonites to death in his misguided zeal, and God sent a famine on Israel as punishment (2 Samuel 21:1-2).