Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Before we launch into today's recap, we need to remember something we read in Deuteronomy 20 to help it all make sense.

In that chapter, God gave very different instructions

on how the Israelites were supposed to handle cities outside of the promised land versus

cities inside the promised land. For cities outside Canaan, they were supposed to greet the cities

with peace and kill only the males, and only if they opposed them. But for those inside Canaan,

they were supposed to operate by a principle called Cheram, where everything is dedicated to Yahweh and devoted to destruction.

As we've talked about before, God used this practice to serve multiple purposes.

Today we meet another group of people from Gibbon. They're called the Gibbeanites or the Hivites,

and they've apparently gotten word of God's instructions to the Israelites. They lived in Canaan,

but decided to pretend like they didn't, so they could get the more lenient treatment and not be

entirely destroyed. Pretty sneaky. They ask Israel to enter into a protective covenant with them. Remember yesterday how Joshua

won the battle against Jericho, then failed to ask God for guidance when fighting against AI, and they lost?

Then he won against AI when he followed God's commands. It seems like he learned very little from that

incident, because here he is, failing to ask God

for guidance again and just forging out on his own. So he gets duped into making a covenant

with his enemies, which is in direct violation of God's commands to Israel in Deuteronomy

7. Pretty quickly, the Israelites find out they've been deceived, and they want to destroy the Gibyanites.

But the Israelite leaders tell them that they have to keep their covenant, and that they'll just have to sever the consequences of their sin and entering into the covenant.

But they don't kill the Gibyanites slash Hivites, and instead just assign them to do manual labor in the service of the temple, which makes

the Gibyanites pretty happy because they know they've avoided being destroyed.

One thing I find interesting about this is that even God's enemies who have deceived God's people

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