Joshua 9:5

old shoes "and ful olde shoon," Wyclif, i.e. sandals, made of (1) hide, or (2) palm-leaves and papyrus stalks. Comp. Mark 6:9.

clouted i.e. patched, "sowid with patchis," Wyclif; from clout, A. S. cleot, clút, "a patch," properly a swelling from a blow, connected with Du. klotsen, to strike, as "botch" with Du. botsen. Comp. Jeremiah 38:11-12, "So Ebed-melech took … thence old cast clouts, and old rotten rags … and said unto Jeremiah, Put now these old cast clouts and rotten rags under thine armholes under the cords." Shakespeare, II. Henry VI., iv:2,

"Spare none, but such as go in cloutedshoon;"

and Latimer, Serm. p. 110, "Paul, yea and Peter too, had more skill in mending an old net, and in cloutingan old tent, than to teach lawyers what diligence they should use in the expedition of matters." Sandals were seldom mended, being of so little value, that they could easily be renewed when the worse for wear. "We have seen a man make himself a new pair out of a piece of skin in a few minutes. The mere fact, that articles so easily renewed, were patched in this instance, was well calculated to suggest the idea of a long journey, in which the convenience of purchasing new ones, or materials for making them, had not been found, for which reason they had been obliged to make their old ones serve by patching. It was a singular thing to see sandals clouted at all, and only a journey would explain the fact." Kitto's Bible Illustrations, 11. p. 288.

old garments It behoved ambassadors to appear in clean and decent, if not in splendid, raiment. This was so essential, that the appearance of these Gibeonites with old and travel-stained clothes could only be explained, upon any common principle, by the assigned reason, that they had come direct from a long journey.

dry and mouldy "Harde and brokun into gobetis," Wyclif. The Hebrew word translated "mouldy" is the same which is rendered by "cracknels" in 1 Kings 14:3. This word (nikuddim) denotes a kind of crisp cake. The ordinary bread, baked in thin cakes, is not made to keep more than a day or two, a fresh supply being baked daily. If kept longer it dries up, and becomes at last excessively hard. It was this kind of bread that the Gibeonites produced, and they indicated its hardness hard as biscuitsin evidence of the length of the journey they had taken. Kitto's Bible Illustrations, 11. p. 289.