“Their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day.”
King James Version (KJV)
9:21 Those - He used them as bondmen, and imposed bodily labours uponthem. But why did not Solomon destroy them as God had commanded, whennow it was fully in his power to do so? The command of destroying them,#Deut 7:2|, did chiefly, if not only, concern that generation ofCanaanites, who lived in, or, near the time of the Israelitesentering into Canaan. And that command seems not to be absolute, butconditional, and with some exception for those who should submit andembrace the true religion, as may be gathered both from #Josh 11:19|,and from the history of the Gibeonites. For if God's command had beenabsolute, the oaths of Joshua, and of the princes, could not haveobliged them, nor dispensed with such a command.