Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water - Glenn Conjurske

Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water

by Glenn Conjurske

When the Gibeonites had deceived Israel, made a league with them, and obtained their oath to let them live, Joshua said to them, “Now therefore ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.” (Joshua 9:23). The Gibeonites were cursed Canaanites to begin with, and liars and deceivers besides. They did not deserve to live. Yet since Israel had sworn to them, and so must let them live, they would make them hewers of wood and drawers of water.

And observe, it was “for the house of my God” (vs. 23) and “for the altar of the Lord” (vs. 27) that Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of water. The time was when I was somewhat scandalized by this. Did the altar of the Lord need the services of cursed Canaanites? Would God accept such services? Ought Israel to have used such services?

The experience and the meditations of years have given me to see the propriety of all of this, and I will pass along those meditations to my readers. The bee, I observe, can draw nectar from the rankest weed, and make good honey of it, and though I do not care to have much contact with bees, yet I can eat their honey. I have learned also to fetch wood and water from the Gibeonites. I have learned that it is God’s wood, and God’s water, and the hands of the Gibeonites have not altered its nature, nor made it unacceptable for the service of God’s house.

But who are these Gibeonites? They are the ungodly, to be sure. But they are the ungodly who dwell in the land. More especially, they are those who have “crept in unawares.” They are modernists and heretics. But let them stand for all the ungodly—-for Chaldeans, and Syrians, and Egyptians, and Canaanites. We may fetch wood and water for the house of God from all of them. Not that I mean to imply they ought to be allowed in the church. Far from that. We have no reason to suppose that Israel admitted the Gibeonites into the congregation of the Lord. Certainly not. Yet they used them to hew wood and draw water for the house of God.

Now to apply all of this. There are numerous authors, editors, compilers, critics, lexicographers, publishers, and librarians among the Gibeonites who have hewed some most excellent wood-piles. True, there is no life in it. It is but dead wood—-dead and dry. Yet when a true Levite puts that wood upon the altar of the Lord, in touch with the fire from heaven, we may have as good a blaze from it as from any wood which ever an Israelite hewed. It is in fact good wood, and none the worse for having been hewed by a Gibeonite. Years ago I sold off a good many books which were but piles of dead wood. There was no spiritual food in them. But in this I was not wise, and I have since set myself to buy them back, and for much higher prices than I sold them for. Dead and dry as they were, they were yet good fire wood.

Now to be more specific. The servants of the Lord must study the word of the Lord, and the words of his servants. To that end they stand often in need of a good dictionary, and it is to the Gibeonites they must go for it. A dictionary may be no more than a pile of dead wood, but it may be a very good pile, and such a pile as no man of God could hew if he were to spend his life at it. And why should he spend his life so? He has better things to do, and the wood-pile is ready to hand, made by the Gibeonites. Though I have very few purely secular books in my library, and none but such as I may put to good use for the house of my God, I must say that one thing which I value more than almost anything else which I possess is The Oxford English Dictionary, in thirteen large volumes. It is, I presume, mostly the work of Gibeonites, but it is good wood for all that, and I have used it often enough in kindling a fire upon the altar of the Lord. The language is the Lord’s, and though the Gibeonites have hewed and stacked it, it is the Lord’s still, and the servants of the Lord may put it to good use.

But more: a good Greek lexicon is as necessary to know the word of the Lord as a good English dictionary. It is my firm belief that there is no better Greek lexicon in existence than Thayer’s—-yet Thayer was a Gibeonite, a Unitarian to be exact. I am sorry for it. I heartily wish he had been a true Israelite. But Gibeonite though he was, he hewed good wood, which the priests of the Lord have used upon the altar of God for more than a century.

It may well be that Gibeonites are not always to be trusted, and we must exercise a watchful eye over their work. Some of their loads may be a good deal shy of a full cord. Be it so. This detracts nothing from the general usefulness of their labors. Wilhelm Gesenius, who gave to us our standard lexicon of Hebrew, was a German rationalist, and his rationalistic views did not fail to appear in his lexicon. But an Israelite indeed was at hand, in the person of Samuel P. Tregelles, the well known textual critic. He translated Gesenius into English, and in the process pointed out and refuted everything of a rationalistic tendency. He says in his introduction, “That Rationalistic tendencies should be pointed out, that such things should be noted and refuted, was the only proper course for any one to take who really receives the Old Testament as inspired by the Holy Ghost: so far from such additions being in any way a cause for regret, I still feel that had they not been introduced, I might have been doing an injury to revealed truth, and have increased that laxity of apprehension as to the authority of Holy Scripture, the prevalence of which I so much deplore.” Tregelles did right well in thus overseeing the work of the Gibeonite, and surely none of them are to be trusted until they prove themselves trustworthy.

But (alas, that I should be compelled to say so) the very same thing is true of the Israelites. How rare it is that an Israelite delivers a full cord. What a rare thing it is that we can find a doctrinal treatise that deals everywhere fairly and honestly with the text of Scripture. In this regard it often happens that the Gibeonites, who have no doctrinal hobby horses to ride, do better than the godly. And so it is with history. Where can we find an objective history of the Baptists? Most of them which I have seen invent, contort, and conceal historical facts, just as it suits their purpose. An objective historian will write good history, be he Israelite or Gibeonite, but (alas again) it is as easy to find an objective historian among the ungodly as it is among the godly. How many of the godly who write history are not historians at all, but advocates and pleaders, who twist and contort the facts of history at every turn of the path, and so think to do God service. The fact is, though I am very sorry for it, we may usually get as good a pile of wood from the Gibeonites as from the Israelites.

And in some cases, a good deal better. Most of the best which has come to us of the history of Mormonism has not come from the godly, but from Mormons themselves, who have left Mormonism, though they have never been converted to Christ. Among these we may put Wife No. 19, by Ann Eliza Young, an estranged wife of Brigham Young. Better still is “Tell It All” by Fanny Stenhouse, a woman who left Mormonism, but who does not appear ever to have come to Christ. The same is true of her husband, T. B. H. Stenhouse, who wrote Rocky Mountain Saints, a very good history of Mormonism.

But I must go yet further. Not only have the Gibeonites hewn very good wood, but some of them have drawn good water also. The makers of the King James Version (if some of them were not Gibeonites themselves) did not hesitate to use some of the water drawn by the Gibeonites, for they did not scruple to adopt many of the renderings of the Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament. And why should they not? The King James Version was not debased thereby, but enriched. Words are not tainted, though the devil himself should use them, and if the Romanists happened to draw some better water than the Protestants had been able to do, it would have been folly to have refused it. The bee does not refuse nectar, though he find it atop a thistle.

It is mostly the Gibeonites who have delved into the secrets of God’s creation, and ferreted out the treasures of wisdom which are to be found there—-and often such treasures as may water our very souls. Though I very seldom read anything of a secular nature, years ago I read the account (in The National Geographic) of the search for the winter home of the monarch butterflies, and found plenty therein to move me to tears, and to deep admiration for one small facet of the wisdom of my God. True, the writer of the account was a Gibeonite, who could find nothing more than evolution in these wonders, but I could find more than that. Here I saw that of all of the millions of monarch butterflies, from all over the continent, which all migrate to the same place in Mexico for the winter, not one of them has ever been to that place before. The frail creature only lives a few weeks, and several generations of them live and die in every summer. Yet the last generation of the summer lives long enough to migrate to Mexico, spend the winter there, return to the north, and lay its eggs. Here I could drink and refresh my soul.

Not that I think the saints of God ought to spend their time and money to explore the realms of nature. They have better things to do, and for the most part they have better things to do than even to drink of the waters which the Gibeonites have thus drawn. They may drink of the waters which come down from heaven, and they have little occasion for those which are drawn up from the earth. Yet they may find a little refreshing even in those, for the God of salvation is the God of nature also.

Yet I must add a solemn caution here. There are many in our day who give themselves up almost entirely to the study of the earth (and even of the world) under the plea that “all truth is God’s truth,” and that the
God of Scripture is the God of nature. All truth is no doubt God’s truth, but it is certainly not all equally important, nor equally profitable. Joshua set the Gibeonites to hew wood and draw water for the house of God, and for the altar of the Lord, and it is only as we can turn them to good account for the testimony of Christ that we have any business at all with the works of the Gibeonites. Nor is this all. There is scarely anything in earth, world, sea, or sky which a true man of God might not turn to some good account, but that gives him no commission to neglect the better for the sake of the good. He has no business to neglect the study of Scripture for the study of nature. We may leave that to the Gibeonites, though we may take a little from their cisterns or their wood-piles when it will serve the cause of our God.

There is in fact a great deal of useful information which the Gibeonites may discover, collect, arrange, classify, and even appreciate, as well as any Israelite. Such are ancient proverbs, facts of history, facts of science, and meanings of words, and where there are Gibeonites willing to do it, we may by all means leave it to them. Let the Israelites avail themselves of their labors where they need them. But let the Israelites remember their own proper sphere. The altar of the Lord was not made for wood and water, but for burnt offerings. The Gibeonites have nothing to do with those. They have no right to eat of the altar of the Lord, nor ever to bring an offering to it. Our business is with the spiritual. Let us keep to our business. When we need wood or water, we may generally have it of the Gibeonites, and we need not scruple to take it of them.

Glenn Conjurske