They did work wilily. — Literally, and they also dealt with subtilty. The stratagem does not seem a very profound one, or one that would have been difficult to detect. But we may remember a fact of Israel’s experience which puts it in a somewhat different light. The Israelites themselves had come from a far country, but their raiment had not “waxed old upon them,” nor did “their feet swell,” these forty years. Of bread they had no need, when there was manna, and God gave them water for their thirst. Of worn garments and stale provisions they had no experience, and therefore, when the Gibeonites presented themselves in this extraordinary garb and guise, it is not unnatural that they were not detected by the eyes of Israel.
They... made as if they had been ambassadors. — The verb thus translated does not occur elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. By the alteration of a letter, the Targum, LXX., and some other versions make it mean, “they gat them provision.”