Inspiration & Worship

Scripture: Joshua chapter 2

While the harlot Rahab may not come to mind as a Biblical heroine, she is nonetheless counted among the “great cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 11. Her story foreshadowed the Age of Grace we enjoy today. Who was she?

After Moses led the 12 tribes of Israel (Jacob) out of Egyptian slavery and into the Promised Land (Canaan), he handed his leadership authority to Joshua.

During the years of slavery, many groups took up residence in Canaan, including those who built the walled city of Jericho. Joshua sent two spies to scout Jericho and they hid from the city’s soldiers in the house of Rahab, a prostitute who lived just inside the city wall.

Due to her line of work, Rahab met many travelers and heard about the miracles God did for the Israelites. She developed a strong faith in God, even to the point of risking her life by hiding the two spies on her rooftop beneath sheaves of grain.

Rahab helped the spies to escape by lowering them through her window to a safe location outside the city walls. First, however, Rahab made the spies promise that when Israel returned to destroy Jericho, she and her family would be spared. The spies agreed and instructed her to hang a scarlet cord from her window.

In time, Israel destroyed Jericho. It spared Rahab and her family, however, just as the spies had promised. Rahab then married one of the spies, who was named Salmon, and they parented Boaz. He, too, married a foreign woman with faith in God, named Ruth. Ruth came to personify not only faith, but also loyalty.

Rahab and Ruth, neither one born Jewish, are both named as ancestors of King David and therefore Jesus Christ.

In Rahab’s time, Israelites alone were called “God’s chosen people.” First by her faith, and later by marriage, Rahab became one of them, showing us that our faith is more important to God than our ethnicity or our sins. God judged Rahab by her heart, foreshadowing the amazing Age of Grace in which we live. In fact, in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus Christ, only the foreign women in Christ’s ancestry are named, perhaps to emphasize that Jesus came to rescue all of us from our sins – and we all are sinners. ❚