By Mr. G.D. Buss, Chairman of the Trinitarian Bible Society. 

In Joshua chapters 9 and 10 we have much instruction as to how to manage and how not to manage matters that come into our pathway.

Jericho lay in ruins after the great shout on the seventh day at the seventh time of circling its walls: powered by God Almighty, the forty-foot thick walls fell. This miraculous victory was meant to hearten Israel as they began to take possession of the Promised Land. At the same time it was a solemn warning to the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan that their hour of judgment was nigh.

Gibeon was the next major city which lay in the path of the invading Israelites. The reaction of its inhabitants was a mixture of awe and deceit. They were awed by the act that Jericho, one of the major cities, had been overcome and they realised that they were next in line. They reacted by deceit, pretending to be travellers from a far country whose shoes and clothes had worn out and whose food had become stale. To avoid the same outcome as Jericho, they bargained with the elders of Israel to become their servants and enter into a league with them. We read a most significant sentence in Joshua 9.14–15: ‘And the men’—that is the Israelites—‘took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD. And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them, to let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them’.

Everything seemed right in the eyes of the elders. How true is the warning: ‘There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death’ (Proverbs 14.12 and 16.25). Solomon’s words are so apposite: ‘I wisdom dwell with prudence’ (Proverbs 8.12). If they had asked counsel of the Lord, He would have revealed the deception that was being played on them. When it was realised three days later that these alleged travellers were in fact near neighbours, there was dissent in the camp. Should they smite Gibeon or abide by the oath they had sworn in ignorance?

The decision to make a league with the Gibeonites contained an oath before the Lord, which to break would have brought reproach on the name of the God of Israel as well as on Israel itself. So Israel refrained from attacking Gibeon. Instead, the Gibeonites were to become servants, hewing wood and drawing water. To give credit to the Gibeonites, having confessed their deception and the reasons for it they readily agreed to serve Israel in these heavy duties.

In the very next chapter Gibeon was attacked by the armies of five of the neighbouring kings who were angry that a pact had been made with Israel. Joshua, in keeping with the spirit of the promise made to Gibeon, went to defend them and to fight with their assailants. The Lord gave a further victory to Israel according to His promise when Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land. The Gibeonites proved true friends of Israel in its succeeding history. Sadly, in later centuries King Saul in fleshly zeal slew many of them in contradiction of the oath that had been given, an act which the Lord noticed and required of Israel in David’s reign (see 2 Samuel 21.1–9).

The question arises, are promises to be kept at all times? We might immediately say, ‘Yes, of course’. However, there are circumstances where it would be wrong to proceed with an oath or promise. If it is contrary to God’s holy Word and law, then it should not be fulfilled (indeed should not have been made in the first place). Herod made an oath to Herodias’s daughter that he would give the girl whatever she asked of him (Mark 6.22–23). Being advised by her evil mother, whom Herod had taken as wife from his brother Philip, she asked for John the Baptist’s head in a charger. Although Herod was sorry, yet for his oath’s sake and lest he should lose credibility with his guests he ordered John’s beheading. In this case it was clearly the greater wrong to keep to his oath when it involved murder and the silencing of the burning and shining light that John the Baptist was (John 5.35).

This shows us that we should only promise what is consistent with God’s Word, and that we should always count the cost before making such an oath before a Holy God. Furthermore, having made an oath or vow, it can only rightly be kept as enabled by the Lord in whose sight vows are made. However, having sworn or promised solemnly to act in a certain way, we should endeavour at all costs to fulfil it unless unforeseen circumstances arise which make it impossible so to do. Hannah counted the cost of giving her much-longed-for and long-waited son Samuel back to the Lord. The Lord honoured her in that sacrifice, from which she did not flinch (see 1 Samuel 1).

In this light how important are the words in Psalm 15.4 where we read, ‘He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not’. In the wedding service, vows are made ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, until death us do part’. Sadly, these days how many marriages founder on the cost of the vows lightly made! However, consider the Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, who in the covenant of grace entered into solemn oath with His Father to redeem His people, and thus by sacred inference vowed to His bride in that covenant ‘ordered in all things, and sure’ (2 Samuel 23.5). None can estimate the cost of that holy transaction. We can only look on in wonder and holy awe, as we see the Lord Jesus agonising in the Garden of Gethsemane as the full cost of His oath was laid upon Him.

This was compassion like a God,
That when the Saviour knew
The price of pardon was His blood,
He pity ne’er withdrew.¹

He swore to His own hurt and changed not (Psalm 15.4). May such sacred contemplation make us men and women of integrity in our promising and keeping of that which we have vowed before the Lord.

First published in Quarterly Record 641. Last updated 29 April 2025.