Numbers 30:2 emphasizes that sworn oaths must be kept. In 2 Samuel 21:1–22, a number of years after the events here in Joshua, God sent a famine upon the land of Israel for three years because King Saul had put many Gibeonites to death. Saul tried to remove them from the land, he reneged on the promise made by Joshua, and as a result Israel experienced God’s wrath.
20 This we will do to them: let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath that we swore to them.”