Joshua 8

Chap. IX. ver. 3.—the inhabitants of Gibeon] Gibeon was a town not far from Ai, to the westward: its inhabitants were a part of the Hivite Canaanites. Pyle.

Joshua 8:33

33.—as well the stranger.] “The stranger” here, and “the strangers conversant among them,” ver. 35, are proselytes to the Jewish religion, who had undertaken to observe this law, and were to be made acquainted with it. Bp. Patrick.

Joshua 8:35

35. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, &c.] Such was the solemn promulgation of the Mosaic Law, at the very commencement of the settlement of the Jews in the land of their inheritance; and in every subsequent transaction of Joshua, we find he acted according to the same Law. See chap. xi. 15; see also chap. xiv. 2; xx. 2; xxii. 1; xxiii. 6; and the whole of the 23d and 24th chapters. “The book of the Law of God,” or “of Moses,” several times spoken of, is undoubtedly the same, of which it is said, that “when Moses had made an end of writing the words of the Law in a book, until they were finished, he commanded the Levites, saying, Take this book of the Law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be a witness against you,” Deut. xxxi. 24—26: that book, which he commanded to be “read before all Israel, at the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles,” ver. 10, 11. This surely was the same with that which the Jews have received from the present hour back to the Babylonish captivity; which must have preceded that event, because it is also received by the hostile Samaritans, who were planted in Judea at the commencement of the captivity; which must have

AND it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof;