Joshua 9:5

And old shoes and clouted upon their feet,.... Which being worn out, were patched with various pieces of leather: and old garments upon them; full of holes and rents, ragged and patched: and the

And old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy. Old shoes and clouted.

Joshua 9:5 And old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread of their provision was dry [and] mouldy.Ver. 5. And old shoes and clouted.] Papists, boasting so much of antiquity, are by one not unfitly compared to these Gibeonites with their old shoes and mouldy bread. Antiquity disjoined from verity is but filthy hoariness, and deserveth no more reverence than an old fornicator, who is so much the more odious because old. It is here at best, as in books, some of which are odorandae rubiginis, of greater antiquity than authority. Those were old things spoken of in 1 Chronicles 4:22, but no whit the better for that.

(5) Clouted—i.e., patched.

Verse 5. Old shoes and clouted] Their sandals, they pretended had been worn out by long and difficult travelling, and they had been obliged to have them frequently patched during the way; their garments also were worn thin; and what remained of their bread was mouldy-spotted with age, or, as our old version has it, bored-pierced with many holes by the vermin which had bred in it, through the length of the time it had been in their sacks; and this is the most literal meaning of the original נקדים nikkudim, which means spotted or pierced with many holes. The old and clouted shoes have been a subject of some controversy: the Hebrew word בלות baloth signifies worn out, from בלה balah, to wear away; and מטלאות metullaoth, from טלא tala, to spot or patch, i.e., spotted with patches. Our word clouted, in the Anglo-Saxon [A.S.] signifies seamed up, patched; from [A.S.] clout, rag, or small piece of cloth, used for piecing or patching. But some suppose the word here comes from clouet, the diminutive of clou, a small nail, with which the Gibeonites had fortified the soles of their shoes, to prevent them from wearing out in so long a journey; but this seems very unlikely; and our old English term clouted-seamed or patched - expresses the spirit of the Hebrew word.

5. old shoes] “and ful olde shoon,” Wyclif, i.e. sandals, made of (1) hide, or (2) palm-leaves and papyrus stalks. Comp. Mark 6:9. clouted] i.e. patched, “sowid with patchis,” Wyclif; from clout, A. S. cleot, clút, “a patch,” properly a swelling from a blow, connected with Du. klotsen, to strike, as “botch” with Du. botsen. Comp. Jeremiah 38:11-12, “So Ebed-melech took … thence old cast clouts, and old rotten rags … and said unto Jeremiah, Put now these old cast clouts and rotten rags under thine armholes under the cords.” Shakespeare, II. Henry VI., iv:2, “Spare none, but such as go in clouted shoon;” and Latimer, Serm. p. 110, “Paul, yea and Peter too, had more skill in mending an old net, and in clouting an old tent, than to teach lawyers what diligence they should use in the expedition of matters.” Sandals were seldom mended, being of so little value, that they could easily be renewed when the worse for wear. “We have seen a man make himself a new pair out of a piece of skin in a few minutes. The mere fact, that articles so easily renewed, were patched in this instance, was well calculated to suggest the idea of a long journey, in which the convenience of purchasing new ones, or materials for making them, had not been found, for which reason they had been obliged to make their old ones serve by patching. It was a singular thing to see sandals clouted at all, and only a journey would explain the fact.” Kitto’s Bible Illustrations, 11. p. 288. old garments] It behoved ambassadors to appear in clean and decent, if not in splendid, raiment. This was so essential, that the appearance of these Gibeonites with old and travel-stained clothes could only be explained, upon any common principle, by the assigned reason, that they had come direct from a long journey. dry and mouldy] “Harde and brokun into gobetis,” Wyclif. The Hebrew word translated “mouldy” is the same which is rendered by “cracknels” in 1 Kings 14:3. This word (nikuddim) denotes a kind of crisp cake. The ordinary bread, baked in thin cakes, is not made to keep more than a day or two, a fresh supply being baked daily. If kept longer it dries up, and becomes at last excessively hard. It was this kind of bread that the Gibeonites produced, and they indicated its hardness—hard as biscuits—in evidence of the length of the journey they had taken. Kitto’s Bible Illustrations, 11. p. 289.

5. Old shoes and clouted — Or, as the Hebrew, shoes fallen into pieces, and botched or cobbled. In long journeys the traveller walks up the hills that he may spare the heavily laden beast.