9:15a

And: The Hebrew word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as And indicates the next action in the storyline. Indicate this in a natural way in your language.

Joshua made a treaty of peace with them: The Hebrew that the Berean Standard Bible and many English versions collapse into one clause, Joshua made a treaty of peace with them, is literally two clauses, “Joshua made peace with them, and he made a covenant for them.” Making a covenant, or a treaty, showed that there will be peace between the two groups of people. For example:

So Joshua made peace with them by making a treaty (God’s Word)

to let them live: The terms of the peace treaty allowed the Gibeonites to live as subjects, under the rule of the Israelites. The Israelites promised not to kill the Gibeonites as they did the other inhabitants of Canaan.

9:15b

and the leaders of the congregation swore an oath to them: The phrase the leaders of the congregation refers to the leaders of the whole Israelite community.

congregation: The Hebrew word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as congregation refers to a meeting of free Israelite men who were eligible for military service.

Here are some other ways to translate this word:

the leaders of the assembly (New International Version)
-or-
the leaders of the community (NET Bible, New American Bible, Revised Edition)

Some English versions leave this word implicit. For example:

the Israelite leaders (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
their leaders (Good News Translation)

swore an oath to them: The clause swore an oath to them means that the Israelite leaders swore an oath, or made a solemn promise, that they will keep the agreement that they made with the Gibeonites.

© 2001, 2011, 2020, 2022, 2023 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.