Joshua 9:21 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

i.e. Let them be public servants, and employed in the meanest offices and drudgeries, (such as this was, this one kind being put for all the rest, as it is Deuteronomy 29:11) for the use and benefit of the congregation; to do this partly for the sacrifices and services of the house of God, as it is expressed, Joshua 9:23, which otherwise the Israelites themselves must have done, partly for the service of the camp or body of the people, and sometimes upon occasion even to particular Israelites; whence they are made bondmen, which is mentioned as a filing distinct from their service in the house of God, Joshua 9:23. And so they are in effect stripped of all their possessions, whereby the main ground of the people's quarrel was taken away. As the princes had promised them; or, because or seeing that (as the Hebrew word sometimes signifies) the princes (i.e. we ourselves; they speak of themselves in the third person, which is very frequent in the Hebrew language) had promised it to them, to wit, that they should live, and confirmed their promise by an oath. So the princes speaking here to the people allege the promise or oath of the princes when they met among themselves, and apart from the people. And this change of persons may possibly arise from hence, because some of the princes who were present in the assembly of the princes might now be absent upon some occasion. And this clause relates not to the next words, which are fitly enclosed within a parenthesis, but to the foregoing clause, let them live, because the princes have promised them their lives.