Joshua 9:4
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
They did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks on their asses, and wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up;
American King James Version (AKJV)
They did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks on their asses, and wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up;
American Standard Version (ASV)
they also did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine-skins, old and rent and bound up,
Basic English Translation (BBE)
Acting with deceit, got food together as if for a long journey; and took old food-bags for their asses, and old and cracked wine-skins kept together with cord;
Webster's Revision
They did work craftily, and went and made as if they had been embassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine-bottles, old, and rent, and bound up;
World English Bible
they also resorted to a ruse, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks on their donkeys, and wineskins, old and torn and bound up,
English Revised Version (ERV)
they also did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wineskins, old and rent and bound up;
Definitions for Joshua 9:4
Clarke's Joshua 9:4 Bible Commentary
They did work wilily - Finesse of this kind is allowed by the conduct of all nations; and stratagems in war are all considered as legal. Nine tenths of the victories gained are attributable to stratagem; all sides practice them, and therefore none can condemn them. Much time and labor have been lost in the inquiry, "Did not the Gibeonites tell lies?" Certainly they did, and what is that to us? Does the word of God commend them for it? It does not. Are they held up to us as examples! Surely no. They did what any other nation would have done in their circumstances, and we have nothing to do with their example. Had they come to the Israelites, and simply submitted themselves without opposition and without fraud, they had certainly fared much better. Lying and hypocrisy always defeat their own purpose, and at best can succeed only for a short season. Truth and honesty never wear out.
Old sacks - and wine bottles, old, etc. - They pretended to have come from a very distant country, and that their sacks and the goat-skins that served them for carrying their wine and water in, were worn out by the length of the journey.
Barnes's Joshua 9:4 Bible Commentary
They did work wilily - literally, "they also," or "they too, did work, etc." The "also" serves, apparently, to connect the stratagem of the Gibeonites with that employed by the Israelites before Ai. It hints that the Gibeonites resolved to meet craft with craft.
Rent and bound up - i. e. the wine skins were torn and roughly repaired by tying up the edges of the tear. The more thorough and careful way, hardly feasible in a hasty journey, would have been to insert a patch.
Wesley's Joshua 9:4 Bible Commentary
9:4 Been ambassadors - Sent from a far country.