cursed: This may refer to the original curse pronounced against the descendants of Canaan. Both of them seem to have implied nothing else than perpetual slavery. The Gibeonites were brought, no doubt, under tribute; performed the meanest offices for the Israelites; being in the same condition as the servile class of Hindoos, called the Chetrees:; had their national importance annihilated, and yet were never permitted to incorporate themselves with the Israelites.
none of you be freed: Heb. not be cut off from you
hewers: In the East, collecting wood for fuel, and carrying water, are the peculiar employment of females. The Arab women of Barbary, and the daughters of the Turcomans, are thus employed. Hence Mr. Harmer concludes, that the bitterness of the doom of the Gibeonites does not seem to have consisted in the labouriousness of the service enjoined them, but its disgracing them from the characteristic employment of men, that of bearing arms, and condemning them and their posterity for ever to the employment of females. Joshua 9:21, Joshua 9:27