It happened at the end of three days after they had made a covenant with them, that they heard that they were their neighbors, and that they lived among them.
"Lest wrath be upon us ..."  (Joshua 9:20). God would indeed have been displeased with Israel if they had violated the solemn covenant they had made with the Gibeonites in the name of Jehovah.  Centuries later, we are told  (2 Samuel 21) that the Israelites of David's time felt the "wrath" when Saul broke Israel's ancestral covenant with Gibeon."[28]