The Deal with the Gibeonites
a sermon by Rev. Michael Gladish
Dawson Creek, BC, November 4th, 2007
"And Joshua said to [the Gibeonites], 'Who are you, and where do you come from?'" (Joshua 9:8).
As you heard in the lesson from Joshua this morning, the Gibeonites were a tribe of people in the hill country of central Canaan, who, having heard of the great victories Israel had won against Jericho and then Ai, came up with a scheme to preserve their own lives without going into battle, by making a peace treaty with the invading armies. The scheme involved a simple deception - pretending to be from a far country, too remote for Israel to be at all concerned about them, and then securing a solemn commitment from Israel not to harm them.
And it worked. They came with old sacks on their donkeys, old, torn and mended wineskins, old, patched sandals on their feet, old garments and dry, crumbly bread, claiming to have traveled from far away, and Joshua played right into their hands. So we read, "... the men of Israel took some of their provisions; but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live..." (Josh. 1:14-15).
He had asked the right questions, "Who are you, and where do you come from?" But he made the mistake of judging the situation according to the appearance and believing what his enemies told him. This, then, was the first of numerous tribes that he was not able to root out of the land. Fortunately the Gibeonites were not as bad as many of the other native peoples in the land, and they could be tolerated because, as the Writings say, they represented "somewhat of good." More about this in a few minutes. So they were made perpetual servants to the house of Israel, specifically people who would "cut wood" and "draw water" for them.
What it All Means in Simple Terms
On one level the lesson of this story is extremely simple: don't judge by the outward appearance but consult the Lord on any important matter. But how do we ask, and how do we receive our answers from Him?
Before we get into that, perhaps we can relate to the old sacks, old wineskins, old sandals, old garments, and the dry, crumbly bread mentioned in the story as metaphors for any old, well-worn customs or traditions in our own lives - natural inclinations that seem far removed from any possibility of real conflict with our spiritual integrity. They may not be very inspiring but they're familiar, and seem harmless enough. Examples that come to mind are our work habits, our recreational activities or our casual relationships with neighbours or people on the street. A lot of times these things just don't seem really connected to our spiritual lives, and besides, we've become accustomed to these ways of living and we just take them for granted. So we make various concessions to the local culture, for example cursing or telling crude jokes, spending gobs of money on things we don't really need, or supporting friends and family members in bad decisions, assuming all these actions are natural, necessary or expected. But the reason we think so is precisely that we take them for granted and we don't ask the Lord.
Remember, Joshua asked the Gibeonites, "Who are you, and where do you come from?" And they of course answered, "We are your servants; now, therefore, make a covenant with us." So when we question our natural inclinations or the expectations of our culture we may also hear the answer that they are our servants; they are useful to us! They help us get along. They help us get ahead. They are just part of how we fit in with the people around us.
It's not true, of course, and even if it is true it isn't right. We shouldn't judge by the appearance, we shouldn't just accept our natural, hereditary inclinations, and we don't really need to make these concessions. But in providence if our motives are essentially good the Lord in His wisdom and mercy can in some cases tolerate these bad habits as long as we contain and control them, and don't let them dominate our lives. We are not, for example, condemned for telling crude jokes, wasting money on material things or even ill advised charity, as long as we do not love the evils or disorders in these deeds (see CL 527, & AC 3993). So we read that Joshua could - and did - make a deal with the Gibeonites, but he made them servants, as they themselves had said - men who would cut wood and draw water for the congregation and for the house of God.
Now this may surprise you, but up to this point we have not even begun to address the real meaning that is contained in the story in actual correspondences, that is, in the particular symbolic or spiritual sense of the many details in it. So far we have just been expanding on the literal meaning of the text, taking certain principles from the natural story and applying them to our own external lives. This can be useful, but it doesn't explain the spiritual sense where we learn not so much about our actions or deeds as about our thoughts and affections; not so much about the natural world and our place in it as about the spiritual world of our inner loves and intentions. This is where the heart of the matter lies, this is where we learn about our eternal lives, and this is what we are going to explore next as we go deeper into the real substance of the story.
What it Means in the Spiritual Sense
First, the Israelites altogether represent all the goods and truths of our spiritual lives in one complex, one integrated whole. Joshua as their leader in the conquest of the land represents the truth that will fight for us if it is inspired by the Lord (actually Jehovah), whose name signifies the Divine love. Truth separated from love unfortunately will never get us anywhere spiritually, but when it is motivated and directed by Divine love it can overcome all the evils and falsities of our hereditary nature and of our worldly experience.
The Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites who formed an alliance to resist the armies of Jehovah represent all these evils and falsities. Most of them literally were descendants of the original Canaan, a son of Ham, who was one of the three sons of Noah (you remember: Shem, Ham and Japheth). Each of these sons represents a particular form of worship, focus or spiritual life: Shem a true internal worship (focus or life), Ham internal worship corrupted, and Japheth external worship that corresponds to the internal (AC 1146). In general Ham and his descendants, then, represent the various distorted or falsified concepts of internal things, in short, perversions of spiritual love and wisdom. And these were all pictured and expressed in the various idolatries and corrupt practices of all these people - things like human sacrifice, ritualized sex in their temples, and of course a whole pantheon of different gods, many of them cruel and demanding.
To give just two examples, the Amorites in general represent the loves of self and the world, and the Hittites in a good sense the factual knowledges relating to life, which unfortunately tend to degenerate into persuasions of falsity based on mere outward experience or appearances.
Now the Gibeonites were Hivites, and the Hivites were a tribe of the Amorites. As mentioned at the beginning they lived in the hill country of central Canaan and in our story they would have been among the people to be conquered next after Jericho and Ai, as Israel marched up into the heart of the land. So what do they represent? - Well, as descendants of Ham, and Canaan in particular, they represent the corruption or perversion of internal things, as just mentioned. But how, and in what way? And what do we mean by this?
The answer may be seen in their treatment by Joshua when he discovered their deception, making them servants whose jobs were to cut wood and draw water. Wood in general represents what is good, and water what is true. But wood cutters are those who want credit and claim merit for the good that they feel or do, thus in terms of our own internal lives, they are the feelings themselves of merit that we enjoy when we do or contemplate something good (AC 2784, 9486:e, et al.). And those who draw water, as distinct from those who drink the water, are those, we read, "who continually desire to know truths, but for no other end than to know them, caring nothing for the use" (AC 3058), thus in ourselves they are the selfish desires that we have to know the truths of spiritual life, without any real interest in doing the things that they teach.
Here is the crux of the story. In a true internal church, or when we have a truly spiritual understanding and focus, we will acknowledge that all good comes from the Lord alone, that we must take no personal credit for it, and that we can thank Him alone for the gift of feeling that goodness as if it were our own. In this state we still enjoy the good, in fact we enjoy it even more than we can when we take credit for it ourselves, since it reminds us powerfully of the awesome love and wisdom, the incredible care, providence and mercy of the Lord.
Likewise in a true internal church, or when we have a truly spiritual understanding and focus, we will want to learn about spiritual things for the sake of our own reformation and regeneration, not just out of curiosity or as an intellectual exercise.
But when this spiritual wisdom is replaced or clouded over by selfish or worldly loves we get all sorts of odd but often very appealing perversions. For example, thinking of the wood cutters we might believe or be told that the most important thing in life is to love one's self, and that only when we first love ourselves can we have any love to share with others. People will even quote the Word to support this idea, in this case suggesting that the Lord's Great Commandment to "love your neighbour as yourself" really means you have to love yourself first. Hogwash. Of course it is important to have some healthy self-esteem, but this does not come from loving yourself, it comes from loving the Lord and knowing - really knowing - that He loves and provides for you and everyone else every moment of every day. In fact the Lord was crystal clear on many occasions that we are to love Him and our neighbours more than ourselves, if necessary laying down our lives for them.
Again, we might believe or be told that we can earn the reward of heaven by doing good deeds in this world, thinking we can get credit for the good and thereby merit salvation. But that's nuts. We can't possibly "outdo" the evils of our own hereditary nature. Besides, the Lord does not reward or punish us for things we did in the past; He simply provides for us according to our actual spiritual states, so if we have the right attitude we're in, and if we have the wrong attitude we're out - at any given moment, and forever once we've established our dominant or ruling loves.
As for drawing water, what's the point other than to drink and use it? In most religions, unfortunately including the New Church, there is a strong tendency to think that the right knowledge or the right understanding is all we need to be accepted by the Lord. So we may spend time reading, thinking, even arguing about the truth, but if we're not practicing the disciplines of what it teaches in our spiritual lives we're not really listening to the Lord.
But we all know that taking credit for the good we do comes much more naturally than giving the Lord credit, and learning for its own sake is much easier than the self-discipline of doing what it teaches. All this just confirms how easily we can be deceived.
Remember all those old things that the Gibeonites brought with them, faking how far they had traveled? Well, each item carries a specific representation. Old sacks, wineskins, sandals, garments and bread all stand for particular spiritual states - not unlike the old habits and traditions we mentioned earlier but actually states of the mind, not of the body or the world.
So for example an old sack on a donkey is actually a weak or false thought used in a misleading argument. And worn out, torn, patched wineskins are "knowledges" that no longer contain the truth. Old, worn out garments also represent falsities, and old, dry, crumbly bread the good of life turned into selfishness, specifically feelings of self-merit and self-preservation!
But here's the beauty of this story about the Gibeonites. Yes, they are deceivers. Yes, they bring before the church (or the church member) all sorts of falsities as just mentioned. And yes, Joshua should have consulted the Lord about them. But he didn't, and in the end he was permitted to make a covenant with them. This covenant is a concession to our fallen state. Still it is a means to the end of our eventual regeneration. It falls into the category of what we call "mediate (or intermediate) good." You see, what the Gibeonites represent is not ideal, it's not heavenly. It's not even very nice. But it's not all bad either and it can serve a use.
For example, in the case of a child, whose love of self and love of the world is still strong, a sense of merit and the idea that he can earn rewards are both vital in providing the incentive for him to do the right thing. Once he gets on track, however, the hope is that he will learn to enjoy the good that he does for its own sake, and recognize the Lord rather than himself in it.
Likewise the love of learning is a means to the end of really living a good life, but in the early stages - as in the early stages of Joshua's conquest of the land - simply learning for its own sake may be the best we can do.
So these two inclinations - merely natural, practical or hereditary inclinations - can be accepted and allowed to live in us, though never as equals in our spiritual lives, only as servants perpetually cutting wood and drawing water for the congregation and for the house of God, that is, leading to the greater good of acknowledging Him and living inwardly according to His Word.
Earlier we asked the question, related to Joshua's decision, how do we seek, and how do we receive our guidance from the Lord? Well, the answer is exactly as we have been doing here this morning: by going to His Word, especially in the spiritual sense as it is now revealed to us in the heavenly doctrines, and then by comparing what we find there with what we find in our own lives. And in this case when we find the false, natural, sensual thoughts that are based on mere appearances, and when we taste the dry, crumbly bread of our own selfishness, let us not be deceived! There's a lot more to life that this! And we can have it all if we will follow the Lord.
Of course if we fail to consult the Lord we will be deceived. But all is not lost. When, in the fulness of time, or as the story has it, at the end of three days, when we learn the truth, we can still make the love of merit and the love of learning our servants, so that they contribute to our spiritual progress after all. Indeed, we may even need to defend and protect these mostly selfish loves, but that is another story for another day (Joshua 10).
For now the point is that it is the Lord who must guide us into spiritual life; we cannot do it ourselves. Yes, He will give us the feeling that we can do it ourselves, and that we can or should make every effort. But in the end, the real blessings of heaven come when we trust Him and give Him the credit for all that is good, and when we use the truth we learn to humble ourselves and do what we are told.
Amen
Lessons: Joshua 9
Luke 16:1-13 (the mammon of unrighteousness is our self of self-merit)
Arcana Caelestia #3993:8-e, selections
