“And so did he unto them, and delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel, that they slew them not.”
Joshua spares them — Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them. Joshua's mercy is grounded not in forgetting their deception but in the inviolability of the sworn oath. The word 'saved' (וַיְשַׁמְּרֵם) echoes the word for 'preserving' the covenant; Joshua actively protects them from the congregation's justified anger.
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
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