What Does Joshua 9:11 Mean?
Therefore our elders and all the settlers of our land spoke to us, saying, Take food for the road with you, and go to meet them, and say to them, We are your servants. So now cut a covenant with us.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Wherefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake to us, saying, Take victuals with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say unto them, We are your servants: therefore now make ye a league with us.THE KEY
“We are your servants” is not the end of the negotiation; it is the language carrying a request for a binding covenant.
THE MEANING
A request can borrow the voice of elders and a whole community to sound settled, then arrive dressed in service. Yet the aim here is a covenant, a binding relation sought through those words. The claim and the bond it seeks remain distinct.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that a posture of submission proves a speaker’s claims: “we are your servants” functions here as persuasion toward a covenant.
THE ROOT
כִּרְתוּ־לָנוּ בְּרִית
kirtu-lanu berit
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
cut, cut off
The English says “make a league,” while the Hebrew phrase is “cut a covenant”: the cutting image remains inside the covenant formula. The request is for a בְּרִית (berit, covenant), a binding relation, and the words of service lead into that request.
ALSO GROWS
karat: to cut
כָּרַת
This verb is the one used in the phrase “cut a covenant,” revealing the concrete image beneath “make.”
hikhrit: to cut down, eliminate
הִכְרִית
It shows the root’s force of cutting away or bringing something to an end.
nikhrat: to be cut off
נִכְרַת
It carries the same cutting root into the condition of being severed.
עֲבָדֶיךָ
avadekha
GROWS FROM
עבד
avad
work, serve
“your servants” in this verse is avadekha. The word “servants” grows from עבד (avad, serve or work), linking the claimed role to an act of service. That language can shape how a request is received, but by itself it does not prove the claim; here it accompanies a bid for covenant.
ALSO GROWS
avad: to work, serve
עָבַד
The verb makes clear that service is an action as well as a claimed status.
avodah: work, service
עֲבֹדָה
This noun carries the same root into the labor or service being performed.
eved: servant
עֶבֶד
This is the singular noun from the same root as the speakers’ description of themselves.
THE PATTERN
A covenant joins spoken words to a binding relation that reaches beyond the moment of speech.
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.Likewise also the cup after the meal, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.The same Hebrew cut-covenant formula appears here, though the English says “made a covenant.” That root connection opens Joshua’s request as a bid for a binding covenant, carried by the words of service.
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