![]() ![]() 11 And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no courage left in any man, because of you for the LORD your God is he who is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Rahab hides the spiesĨ Before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, 9 and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.ġ0 For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. 7 So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut. The Bible doesn’t mention this harsh reality but sometimes, as a last resort, you have to be ruthless with yourself or with others.Ĥ But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them and she said, “True, men came to me, but I did not know where they came from 5 and when the gate was to be closed, at dark, the men went out where the men went I do not know pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.”īut she had brought them up to the roof, and hid them with the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof. Rahab had to abandon the citizens of Jericho to save herself and her family. Rahab was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks, but God used her to help His people. Even an ordinary person can further God’s plan.Rahab does not stand still and let things happen to her. Trust in God, but keep your wits about you too.Joshua means ‘Yahweh/God is my salvation’.Rahab means ‘open wide’. This was a not-very-subtle way of saying she was a prostitute, or perhaps that she had many children.Reconstruction of ancient Jericho, with outer and inner walls, walls in bad repair, and houses/rooms built into the outer wall itself the collapsed walls made it much easier for Joshua and the Israelites to gain access to the city She told them to escape into the hills and stay there for three days, by which time the coast would be clear. One of these rooms had a window large enough for a man to pass through, and she (with presumably some help from her family) let the two men down on a rope through this window to the ground below. Her house had small rooms, enough to house a family, built into the otherwise solid mass of the city wall. ![]() The resourceful Rahab took care of that too. Meanwhile the two men were still in mortal danger, trapped in a hostile city. They would give her safe passage, even if they slaughtered everyone else in Jericho. She extracted a promise from them: when the time came, they and their army would not molest or harm her family in any way. ![]() Moreover, she had not merely risked her own life, but the lives of her whole family. She acknowledged that the Hebrews were a real threat to her city, and that Joshua had done an excellent PR job, putting terror into all the local inhabitants by recounting stories about the extraordinary power of his God.īut, she pointed out, she had saved their lives and they owned her a debt for this. Why did she risk her life?Īs soon as the soldiers had gone, Rahab went up to the roof area to bargain with the men. Rahab urged the soldiers to pursue the two Hebrew men, whom she said had disappeared into the darkness after they left her inn. The soldiers saw the sheaves but did not look under them – it was dark up on the roof. They were looking for Hebrew spies.īut Rahab had already made her choice, siding with the two strangers.Įarlier in the night she had hidden the two men on the flat roof of her house, under large bundles of flax that had been laid out to dry. When she answered, two soldiers stood there. During the night there was a banging on the door of her inn. ![]()
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