The Israelites replied to these Hivites, “How do we know you don’t live nearby? For if you do, we cannot make a treaty with you.”
Parallel translations
- WEB The men of Israel said to the Hivites, “What if you live among us. How could we make a covenant with you?”
- KJV And the men of Israel said unto the Hivites, Peradventure ye dwell among us; and how shall we make a league with you?
- BSB But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you dwell near us. How can we make a treaty with you?”
- NKJV Then the men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you dwell among us; so how can we make a covenant with you?”
- NASB But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you are living within our land; how then are we to make a covenant with you?”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The men of Israel voice suspicion, wondering whether these people actually live nearby. A rightful caution is raised but not pursued.
Overview
Israel's leaders rightly sense the danger that these visitors might be local Hivites with whom no covenant was allowed. Their hesitation shows an awareness of God's command, yet they fail to press the inquiry to certainty. The moment underscores how good instincts must be carried through by seeking the Lord rather than being talked past.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Josh 11:19There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took all in battle.
- Judg 2:2You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars.’ But you have not listened to my voice. Why have you done this?
- Num 33:52then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their stone idols, destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places.
- Exod 23:31–33I will set your border from the Red Sea even to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.
- Gen 10:17the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites,
- Exod 3:8I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
- Deut 20:16But of the cities of these peoples, that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes;
- Deut 7:2–3and when Yahweh your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them; then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them;
- Gen 34:2Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her. He took her, lay with her, and humbled her.
- Josh 9:1When all the kings who were beyond the Jordan, in the hill country, and in the lowland, and on all the shore of the great sea in front of Lebanon, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard of it
- Exod 34:12Be careful, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be for a snare in the middle of you:
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Christ at the center
Joshua — the same name as Jesus, 'the LORD saves' — leads God's people into their inheritance, a shadow of the greater Joshua who brings us into the true rest and the promised land that remains.
How Joshua 9:7 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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