This post is part of a Christmas series on the female ancestors of Jesus as given by the Gospel of Matthew.
Rahab was a prostitute whose story is told in the Book of Joshua, in the 2nd and 6th chapters. This book tells the story of the Israelite conquest of various small nations in the land of Canaan. Joshua's spies find her when they are scouting out the city of Jericho (as in the old spiritual, "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho/And the walls came tumblin' down"). The king of Jericho learns that the spies are in her house, but she hides them.
As Jane Schaberg notes, the story does not tell us why the spies sought her out, or why she accepted them. Based on their reputation for conquest and the miracle at the Red Sea, she recognizes that their god is more powerful than the gods of Jericho. She tells them, "Yahweh your God is he who is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath" (translation in Schaberg article). And she gets their promise that when they conquer the city, they will spare her and all her family. And they do.
Her house is by the wall of the city, and she lets them down on a rope out of the window so they can return and make their report to Joshua. She hung a scarlet cord out her window so the Israelite army would know which house to spare.
Schaberg says:
Rahab, like Tamar, was a survivor in the world of men. Through her ingenuity and faith, she saved the spies from the Canaanites and her own family from the Israelites. Rabbinic tradition emphasizes Rahab's extreme generosity in order to emphasize her repentance and conversion to Israel's god. Similarly in Christian tradition, the Letter to the Hebrews and the Letter of James emphasize her hospitality to the spies. "A person is justified by works and not by faith alone... Was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road?" (James 2:25) [The Letter of James became a tricky one to interpret in the later Catholic-Protestant disputes over "justification by faith."]
According to rabbinic tradition, Rahab later marries Joshua and becomes the ancestress of several prophets. The tradition Matthew cites, in which Rahab marries Salmon and gives birth to Boaz, is not known from any other source. Thre may well have been more to this lost story that influenced Matthew's decision to include Rahab in his genealogical list.
Eugen Drewermann is impressed with her resourcefulness and her worldly wisdom. She grasped the situation quickly when the officials came looking for the Hebrew spies. She came up with a convincing story and handled things in a way that no innocent country girl could be expected to:
One must be very practiced in lying and downright hardened in dealing with people in order to lead the men around by the nose so masterfully as Rahab did in the moment of danger. She appears to have been well prepared even for a possible search of the house ...
The latter suggests, as he points out, that she may have had experience in hiding those being chased by private enemies or by royal ones. And he takes special notice of the fact that this prostitute insists not only on saving herself, but on saving her entire family.
There is also an intriguing connection between the story of Rahab and Tamar provided in Tamar's story in Genesis 38, as she has her sons conceived with Judah:
When the time of her delivery came, there were twins in her womb. And when she was in labor, one put out a hand; and the midwife took and bound on his hand a scarlet thread, saying, "This came out first." But as he drew back his hand, behold his brother came out; and she said, "What a breach you have made for yourself!" Therefore his name was called Perez [a breach]. Afterward his brother came out with the scarlet thread upon his hand; and his name was called Zerah. (Revised Standard Version)
The scarlet thread could be a literary link with the scarlet cord that Rahab uses to protect her house.
************************************* Jane Schaberg, "Before Mary: the Ancestresses of Jesus" Bible Review Dec 2004 Eugen Drewermann, Das Matthäus-Evangelium: Bilder der Erfülling, Erster Teil (1992). The English translations are mine.
The sources quoted in this post include:
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