Joshua 9:27 That day he made the Gibeonites woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly, to provide for the needs of the altar of the LORD at the place the LORD would choose. And that is what they are to this day.
I our era of “fake news” and the proliferation of social media and ‘bots’, it can be very hard to verify a story. How can we tell if something we hear or read is actually what happened? How do we verify the source material for these things?
This has always been a problem down through history. Only the eyewitnesses could be trusted, and even then, we now know that eyewitness testimony is not always reliable. The human mind is very susceptible to change and variability when it comes to remembering the past.
But what if your enemies had the same story as you did! That would certainly help to validate the history. No enemy would willingly repeat a story that wasn’t true if it kept them oppressed. They would make u a story that would validate some other history that would make them look better. At least I would do that!
The Egyptians changed their hieroglyphs to reflect a better version of their story. The new Pharaoh would put his name and his family in the place of the previous leader. The old would be carved over to reflect the “official” version of events.
We see this today as wiki articles are rewritten to slant in a particular direction, in favor of one particular viewpoint. The whole “woke” movement is about rewriting history that is ‘offensive’ to people who are very sensitive to way to many things. I often want to tell them to get some tougher skin. And the world laughs at us in the process.
Our text tells us about the Gibeonites from a particular town who pulled off a life-saving deception. They had heard about the LORD and His ability to defeat an enemy of His people Israel. And they knew they were on the LORD’s hit list. So they devised a plan. And it worked!
But now as a punishment they became the manual laborers for the nation of Israel. They were consigned the difficult tasks of everyday life. They had to cut wood for the fires and water for all the water needs of the community.
An how do we know this is what happened? They were still doing it “to this day.” Their position in society hadn’t changed. They hadn’t been able to get themselves out of their low social position. They hadn’t been able to ingratiate themselves and escape their punishment. They still dealt in wood and water.
This phrase “to this day” is used several times in this portion of our narrative to indicate the continued consequences that demonstrate the veracity of the account given. The Gibeonites were still doing the same job and that pointed to the reality of the narrative told. And it continued “to this day.”
This praise “to this day” also tells us something about the writing of the narrative itself. At least parts of the narrative were written by people other than those who lived the events. The person writing our phrase “to this day” must have been living some time following the events themselves, otherwise the phrase “to this day” would be meaningless. It would carry no weight.
We have already read about the “Book of Jashar” which is, at least in part, a source which tells the same story as the narrative written in this section of Scripture. And just because someone else wrote the story doesn’t make the story untrue. And just because the Scriptures use other sources doesn’t mean that the LORD didn’t inspire what was written or that it wasn’t accepted by the people of God as the Word of God.
These things that still existed “to this day” brought opportunity for the current generations listening to the Word of God to believe in the God who acts in history.
The Arnold Journey 