“By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace” (Heb 11:31).
Although we’re told very little about Rahab the harlot, she is one of the unsung heroines in the Old Testament, and one of even fewer who are mentioned in the New Testament. Although Deborah was a judge and leader of Israel, prophetess and a woman of faith; although Esther was one of the Hebrew Diaspora who became queen of the largest empire the world had ever seen up to her time, a woman of great faith and courage, and who was humanly responsible for saving the lives and existence of the whole Hebrew nation; although Leah, was a woman of great faith and gave birth to the patriarchs of six of the twelve tribes of Israel; and, no doubt, the reader can think of other women they would include here; none of these great women, heroines of faith and of the nation of Israel, are mentioned outside their own story. Yet Rahab, forever known to us as “the harlot”, and a gentile whose whole nation was under God’s curse and judgment and whose city of Jericho would soon be totally destroyed and every inhabitant put to the sword, not only trusted God completely, but was destined and chosen by God to be an ancestor in the genealogy of Jesus, the Saviour of mankind (Matt 5:1); a genealogy which included every king who ever reigned from Jerusalem.
But Rahab was not simply a woman whose house was randomly chosen by the spies, although it may have seemed like that to them all at the time. Rachel had a divine appointment with these men. They had come to gather any information about the city of Jericho to take back to Joshua who was planning an invasion to utterly annihilate the city and its inhabitants – and, were it not for God’s sovereign choice and mercy, Rahab would have been one of them. Yet it would seem that getting the information was not God’s purpose in sending the spies, because just before the battle he gave Joshua specific and very unusual instructions, i.e. the army was to march around Jericho blowing ram’s horns once a day for six days and on the seventh to do it seven times, and then the whole army was to shout and the walls would fall down (Josh 6:1-21). So any information with which the spies came back to Joshua was irrelevant and useless. It seems that the spies’ true mission, known only to God, was to save Rahab and her family.
Rahab had not only been chosen by God to become one of his people (Eph 1:4-5); she had been chosen to be the mother of kings and an ancestor of the Messiah, her Saviour and ours. She was, in a real sense, one of the significantly influential women of history. What an astonishing pedigree for a gentile, a common prostitute, and a woman!
Was Rahab Really a Prostitute?
There are some pious people, sensitive souls, who balk at the fact that a woman who is mentioned in the bible as having saving faith, and especially a woman who was an ancestor of Jesus, was really so bad as to have been a harlot. A story has been circulating ever since the time of Josephus, who may have been the instigator of it, which says that Rahab was just an innkeeper and not really a prostitute. The truth is that Rahab really was a prostitute. She may have been a shrine or cult prostitute i.e. a woman who had sex with men as part of the worship of Baal and his consort Ashtoreth; or she may have been a common street whore who had sex with any man who would pay her for the privilege; but either way, she was a prostitute.
But I think it unlikely that she was a shrine prostitute because as such she would probably have lived in the temple; whereas Rahab lived in a house in the defensive wall of the city. And in the two NT references to her, both of which call her “the harlot”, the meaning of the Greek is a common whore who accepted money for her favours. But it doesn’t really matter if she was a prostitute; and if she was, what kind of prostitute she was. She was a prostitute at the time she met God and put her faith in him; immediately following which, she put that profession aside. And it is possible, even probable, that she had a family business as well. The passage tells us, “….she had brought them up to the roof of the house, and hid them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order upon the roof” (Josh 2:6). She and her family probably made linen from the flax on the roof and sold it. Whether her prostitution was her main source of income we’re not told – but she is known as Rahab the harlot, not Rahab the linen weaver. But we don’t have to worry that she was a harlot because God saves sinners of all stripes, and the blood of his Son covers them all. When the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth and referred to various kinds of sins, especially sexual sins, he reminded them, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). Rahab was a prostitute, but God saved her, washed her, and sanctified her, and she immediately left that profession. It’s just as well that she did though, and responded to God by faith, because in just a few days’ time the entire city – buildings, livestock, and population, would be utterly destroyed. Rahab and her family were saved in the nick of time.
Rahab’s New Identity
Rahab is still known even today as “Rahab the harlot” because this is what the bible calls her. No doubt, this title is how she defined herself, and how she was defined by her community. Her profession, her occupation, her trade, was to sell her body to men for sex. In her society her profession was more acceptable than it would be in ours, we like to think, but even then she would have been looked down on – women who are easy with their favours or who sell them are despised by all, no matter what period of time or what culture they live in. Even today, men who have sex with as many women as they can are smiled upon benignly as just sowing their wild oats. But when a woman is sexually active she is called a slut and/or a whore by the very men who have sex with her. Some kinder or less vulgar souls may refer to her as “a fallen woman”; but whichever term one uses, none of them are respectful or kind.
But when Rahab put her trust in the God of Israel, her identity was no longer in her sinful lifestyle and trade, or her sexuality, but in her relationship to God. Rahab feared God, therefore her sins were forgiven her; and just as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, he likewise said to Rahab (but in her heart by way of conviction of sin): “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (Jn 8:11). And she went and sinned no more.
Rahab’s Remarkable Faith
The first time we meet Rahab she is lodging the two spies sent by Joshua (Josh 2:1). When these two spies lodged at Rahab’s house, no doubt they told her about their God and the great things they had seen or heard of him doing. But Rahab had already heard about him. When she was hiding them on the roof of her house, she told them, “I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath” (Josh 2:9-11).
What a statement of faith! She knew nothing about God except for what she’d heard of his great power. But it was enough for her to believe that he was the true and living God. The ancients all believed that the nation with the most powerful gods would defeat those whose gods were weaker or inferior (e.g. 1 Kings 20:22-28; Jer 44:15-19). So Rahab’s faith in the God of Israel was according to the light she had, however feeble we Christians who have the full light and glory of the gospel might think her light was. The important consideration is that she followed that light with all her heart, even to the extent of separating herself from her people and her country, as did Ruth, another gentile woman and forbear of the Messiah (Ruth 1:16-17).
The fear that Rahab and the citizens of Jericho experienced was justified and in the plan of God. Forty years before this, when God was in the midst of devastating Egypt with the Ten Plagues, he announced to Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron: “For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth. And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth” (Exod 9:14-16; see also Num 14:14; Josh 4:24). So, unlike the rest of Jericho, Rahab cast in her lot with the people of God; consequently her life, and the lives of her whole family, were saved, and they lived to tell the tale. The other inhabitants of Jericho had the same light as did Rahab but they rejected it and tried to destroy those who did believe (Rom 1:18).
The Development of Rahab’s Faith
From the time the spies lodged in Rahab’s house, Rahab was growing in faith and putting it into practice. As James, the Lord’s brother, discussing the relationship between faith and works, writes: “Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (Jas 2:25). Rahab demonstrated her faith by her works.
The king of Jericho had heard that the spies had entered Jericho and he found out that they had stayed at Rahab’s house. So he sent messengers to her, demanding that she hand them over to him. This was big. Rahab, a common prostitute, had attracted the king’s attention. Rahab, a powerless woman, had the king’s messengers, with all his power and authority delegated to them, breathing down her neck. She could have handed the spies over; they were, after all, right there in her house. And she was rightly expected to do so; or, if they had already departed, she would be expected to tell the messengers where they had gone. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to the messengers that she would protect them; after all, Rahab was a citizen of Jericho; as such, she would suffer the same fate at the hands of the Israelites that the rest of the city would suffer. It would be in her interest to do all she could to help the king’s messengers to find them.
But Rahab was no longer a citizen of Jericho; she was now a citizen of heaven (Heb 11:15-16; Eph 2:19). And she protected the spies, even at the risk of her own life. If she had been found to be hiding them, she would have been justifiably killed as a traitor. But Rahab’s faith in God was sufficient to enable her to brave the danger; so she hid them and lied to the messengers, sending them on a wild goose chase. But the innate desire to preserve her own life and her family’s, was also very powerful, as powerful as her faith. And she bargained with the spies. After hiding them, and the departure of the king’s messengers, and after her declaration of faith to them, she said to the spies, “Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the Lord, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give me a true token: And that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death” (Josh 2:12-13).
Rahab had risked everything and put it all on the line. She had turned her back on her city and her friends and cast in her lot with a people she didn’t know, and a God she hadn’t experienced. She was taking a huge gamble – and yet it was a surety. Rahab wasn’t taking this dangerous risk on a whim. She believed in the God of Israel, and her faith was not of herself; as with Lydia, God had opened her heart (Acts 16:14). Her faith enabled her to stake her life on the faithfulness of God and the men who served him.
In those days, to swear by the gods was binding, whether pagan or Israelite; people did not want to offend the gods lest the gods get angry and punish them. So she bound the spies by oath that she and her family would be delivered from death. She also asked for something tangible – a token of some kind – so that it would serve as a reminder and a comfort to her that she would be safe. And the spies responded in kindness and sincerity, giving her everything she asked of them. “Our life for yours, if ye utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the Lord hath given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with thee” (Josh 2:14).
Before departing, the spies gave explicit conditions which bound both Rahab and themselves, as well as God and the Israelite army, assuring her that as long as she did what they required, she and her family would be delivered from destruction. They did, in effect, make a covenant with her; a covenant with such certainty of Rahab’s security that they covenanted to give their own lives if anything happened to her while she kept the conditions of the oath. “And the men said unto her, We will be blameless of this thine oath which thou hast made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by: and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee. And it shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him. And if thou utter this our business, then we will be quit of thine oath which thou hast made us to swear” (Josh 2:17-20).
Rahab was now content. She had bound the spies, and Israel, by their own God, whom now she would also serve. Her reply to this oath was, “And she said, According unto your words, so be it. And she sent them away, and they departed: and she bound the scarlet line in the window” (Josh 2:21). The spies weren’t bound by vague statements or baseless assurances; they were bound by specific words in the form of specific and definite promises and conditions. And Rahab immediately tied that scarlet cord to her window, as the first part of keeping her side of the bargain, and as a visible pledge which bound the spies. That scarlet thread was the promise of God made visible. And Rahab’s binding it to her window was her faith made visible. She could look at it at any time of day; her family could look at it at any time of day. And each time they did, they would be reminded that God was bound to deliver them from the destruction soon to be unleashed on Jericho. Rahab trusted that scarlet cord because it was the word and promise of God to her; it was all the bible she had but it was every bit as good as the Bible that we trust today.
God Keeps the Covenant Made in his Name
When Jericho was defeated and captured and every living thing destroyed, we’re told, “But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the country, Go into the harlot’s house, and bring out thence the woman, and all that she hath, as ye sware unto her. And the young men that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had; and they brought out all her kindred, and left them without the camp of Israel….and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho” (Josh 6:22-25).
God is faithful. He keeps his promises. And the least soul is precious to him. Rahab and her family experienced the faithfulness of God and they would soon learn of his love and his mercy, of the good laws that he had given his people, and of the sacrifices that made atonement for sin – sacrifices that did not require human blood or the cruel murder of children, and of worship that dignified men and women rather than degrading and corrupting them. And Rahab would have learned that the kindness she had shown to the two spies was kindness shown to God himself. “He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me” (Matt 10:40-42).
Rahab in Israel
The text says that Rahab “dwelleth in Israel even unto this day” (Josh 6:25). If it were not for the New Testament, we would never have learned what became of Rahab after she settled in Israel. But in just a single verse, we discover something huge about Rahab. Yes, she was commended in Hebrews 11:31 for her faith; and in James 2:25 that she was justified by faith demonstrated by her works; this is really the most important thing for and about Rahab – she was truly a woman of faith and a heroine of courage inspired by her faith. What greater commendation can be given any human being? But there is more. It is found in one of those obscure verses that hardly anybody ever reads; and if they do, they read right over it, not even noticing the tremendous story of faith and heroism underlying it. The verse is: “And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias” (Matt 1:5-6). What treasure is this!
Rahab and the memory of her didn’t just fade away into obscurity after she moved to Israel. Firstly, she was known to Joshua as the woman who hid the messengers that Israel had sent. He, in turn, spoke of her to the whole army, and placed her under his protection. So she would have been known and highly regarded in the whole nation. It could even be speculated that in the whole of Israel, only a handful of names would be known to everybody at that time – the high priest, Phinehas, Joshua, Caleb – and Rahab. Rahab, an obscure and despised street prostitute in a small city became a legend in her own time, known by name to God and the whole population of his people. Her faith and the kindness to the spies which resulted from it were known to the whole nation, and they would have loved and respected her for it. And she was no longer a prostitute, no longer had to degrade herself and satisfy the lusts of lecherous men to make a living. Rahab was a new person in a new nation and a child of God. She was respected for the first time in her life. She married a man of Judah named Salmon (pronounced Sal-mon) and the fruit of this marriage was the line of kings from David to Jesus. Rahab truly was the mother of kings and forbear of the Messiah. And who knows whether one of the spies whom she hid, and who came to bring her out of the ruins of Jericho, was Salmon, her future husband?