Meet the Lady with the Label...

Yesterday, we began looking at a story in the Bible which records how God, after 400 years of extending grace brought the Jewish people to the edge of the land that God had promised to give them after being freed from slavery. And Jericho, being a border city a short distance from the Jordan River, would be the first city that the Jewish nation would encounter. And as the Jewish people prepare for their first battle against the nations that lived in the Promised Land, their leader Joshua sends spies out on a reconnaissance mission.

And it is in the city of Jericho where we meet the woman who was in the family tree of the Messiah and who carried the label harlot resided. We first meet this woman, named Rahab, in a letter in our Bibles called the book of Joshua, Joshua 2:1:

Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shittim, saying, "Go, view the land, especially Jericho." So they went and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and lodged there.

Now you may be thinking, why go to a brothel? In the culture of Jericho it would not be viewed as unusual for people to come from out of town and have a little fun with the local prostitutes. This made a brothel the perfect place for spies to hide without drawing suspicion. However, the plan did not work out so well, as we see in the next verses:

It was told the king of Jericho, saying, "Behold, men from the sons of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land." And the king of Jericho sent word to Rahab, saying, "Bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land." But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them, and she said, "Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. "It came about when it was time to shut the gate at dark, that the men went out; I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them." But she had brought them up to the roof and hidden them in the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued them on the road to the Jordan to the fords; and as soon as those who were pursuing them had gone out, they shut the gate.

Now you might be wondering, “Why would Rahab lie?” While it is not unusual for people who are far from God to lie about something, especially in a culture as wicked as Jericho was, why she lied seems weird, doesn’t it? Why would Rahab lie and risk her life to protect men that she knew represented the people who desired to destroy her and her people? We find the answer in the story continues:

Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, and said to the men, "I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you. "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 who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. "When we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.

Rahab responded to the evidence of God’s activity through the Jewish people by recognizing that the Lord was the one true God. Rahab responded by recognizing that the label that she bore placed her on the lowest rung on the ladder as part of this wicked culture and that she was worthy of punishment and in need of rescue. And Rahab responded by swimming against the current of the culture she lived in that devalued human life by protecting the spies that she viewed as representatives of the one true God.

Rahab then demonstrates her belief in who God was and her need for rescue by doing something that many would view as incredibly risky and even stupid. We will look at what Rahab did tomorrow...