If tablets [a written contract] bound the Israelites [to the] covenant, they could have imposed nothing on the Gabaonites but what had been written down for them. But now [the tablets] did not bind, as [was] discussed above. Therefore, for the impostures and lies, some penalty could be inflicted — partly for the injury and disgrace brought upon the Israelites, partly that others might be deterred from guile and fraud, while the fraud was, in the sight of all, [punished as] fraud.
But I. That penalty ought not to have been death. First, because the fraud and guile had been constructed by them not for the destruction of anyone, but for their own safety — arising not from malice, but from necessity. Secondly, because the Gabaonites desired to be initiated into the sacred [rites] of the Jews, as [was] expounded before. To take them, therefore, out of life [was] not sufficiently humane and equitable.
II. That penalty ought also not to have been extermination and exile from all the borders of this land: because this would have been to hinder those who wished to devote themselves to the divine worship, and to expose the Neophytes [new converts] to the most certain perils of [their] former superstitions — since outside that region the immense Ocean of idol-madness was everywhere. And for this cause, for the Jews — who [were] nevertheless born, reared, advanced, and strengthened in the true worship of God — exile, which would be outside all the borders of Canaan, was none [i.e. never imposed], as I recall reading somewhere; but they were permitted to flee to certain cities of that same divine community, sharers of [the same] religion (Deut. 21). And hence that complaint of David (1 Kings [1 Samuel] 26:19): “They have cast me out today, that I should not dwell in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve strange gods.”
III. There could have been a penalty which would take away [their] goods, transfer [them] from their cities and places into certain other places (yet of Jewish dominion), despoil [them] of liberty, [and] devote [them] to certain public works and ministries — as will be said in the following little question. For so the Romans, because the Brutii had defected to Hannibal, appointed them for the inflicting of the punishments of malefactors, as Festus [is] witness. And Gellius (bk. 10, ch. 3) [says] thus: “When Hannibal the Carthaginian was in Italy with an army, and the Roman people had fought several adverse battles, the Brutii, first of all Italy, defected to Hannibal. The Romans, taking this ill — after Hannibal had departed from Italy and the Carthaginians had been overcome — did not, for the sake of ignominy, enroll the Brutii [as] soldiers, nor hold [them] as allies, but ordered [them] to obey and serve the magistrates going out into the provinces, in the stead of servants. And so they followed the Magistrates as, in the stage-plays, [those] who were called ‘lorarii’ [thong-men], and bound or beat those whom they had been ordered [to].” Of the Lucanians and Picentes, for the same cause, we read in Strabo (bk. 5, at the end), [that they] had to αὐτοὺς σκυτάλας ἡμεροδρομεῖν καὶ γραμματοφορεῖν [autous skytalas hēmerodromein kai grammatophorein] — that is, “to be couriers and letter-carriers.”