Menial servants. The Gibeonites who attempted to deceive Joshua were condemned by the princes of Israel to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the congregation (Joshua 9:21,23). In Deuteronomy 29:11 the hewers of wood are mentioned among the strangers as servants. The same expression is also found in Jeremiah 46:22, where it is said that the Babylonians will come against Egypt with axes, as hewers of wood, and in 2 Chronicles 2:10, where Solomon asks Hiram, King of Tyre, to send him hewers () of wood.