The Woman Inside Jericho Who Knows What Is Coming

Shittim, “the acacias”, was the last camp east of the Jordan, where Israel had been drawn into the worship of Baal-peor (Numbers 25:1). Moses once sent twelve named spies with public instructions (Numbers 13); Joshua sends two, unnamed, “secretly”. “Lodged” is the ordinary verb for lying down for the night.

Jericho was a city state with its own king. “To night” means this very night: the news reached the palace within hours. “Search out” is chafar, to dig, to probe, the verb Moses used when the people asked for spies in Deuteronomy 1:22.

The demand, “Bring forth the men”, is the demand made at Lot’s door in Sodom (Genesis 19:5), where strangers who had entered a house were also sought by the townsmen. In both accounts the householder protects the guests against the city.

The Hebrew says she “hid him”, in the singular, a small oddity that some interpreters explained as her hiding each man separately. “Wist” is the old past tense of wit, to know. She admits the visit, which lends weight to what she invents next.

City gates were shut at dark; Nehemiah had the gates of Jerusalem closed as the shadows fell before the Sabbath (Nehemiah 13:19). “I wot not” is the present tense of the same verb as “wist”. She even urges speed, which sends the pursuers off before anyone thinks to search her roof.

Flax was pulled in spring and the stalks spread out on flat roofs to dry before they were soaked for linen fibre. Exodus 9:31 puts flax in bloom at the barley season. The detail fits the timing of the crossing at harvest (3:15) and the Passover (5:10).

“Fords” is maabarot, crossing places. The Book of Judges will twice show men seizing the fords of the Jordan to cut off fugitives: Ehud against Moab (Judges 3:28) and Jephthah’s men against Ephraim at the Shibboleth test (12:5–6). The gate shut behind the pursuers also shuts the spies inside.

“Before they were laid down” uses the same verb as “lodged” in verse 1: before the men lay down to sleep. The conversation that follows takes place at night on the roof, among the flax, with the city gate closed below.

Rahab all but quotes the Song of the Sea: “Fear and dread shall fall upon them” and “all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away” (Exodus 15:15–16). “Terror” is emah, the same word, and “faint” is the same verb for melting. The song predicted Canaan’s fear; Rahab reports it.

The Red Sea was forty years in the past, yet Jericho still talked of it. “Utterly destroyed” is the verb heherim, to devote to destruction, and this is its first use in the Book of Joshua. The Canaanite woman already knows the word for what Israel does to cities.

Her words match Moses’ in Deuteronomy 4:39 almost exactly: “the LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else.” A woman of Jericho, who never heard Moses speak, says what Moses told Israel to lay to heart.

“Kindness” is chesed, loyal love, the covenant word. She claims she has shown it and asks for it in return. “A true token” is ot emet, a sign of truth, something she can hold; the scarlet cord of verse 18 becomes that sign.

Father, mother, brothers and sisters, and all that they have: the list names no husband and no children, which suggests to many readers that Rahab had neither. “Deliver” is natsal, to snatch out, the rescuing verb.

“Our life for yours” is literally “our soul instead of you to die”, a pledge of their own lives. “Kindly and truly” is chesed and emet together, the pair in God’s self description in Exodus 34:6, “abundant in goodness and truth”.

Walls of this period were often casemate walls, two parallel walls with rooms between, and houses could be built into them with windows in the outer face. The verse tells the escape before the conversation of verses 16–21, so the account may be arranged by subject rather than strict sequence.

The pursuers had gone east toward the river; she sends the men west into the hills behind Jericho, limestone cliffs full of caves. Three days gives the search time to fail and return. She plans the men’s escape more carefully than they planned their mission.

“Blameless” is neqiyyim, clear of an obligation, the word Deuteronomy 24:5 used for the new husband “free at home one year”. The spies begin to set conditions: an oath binds them only if its terms are kept.

“Line of scarlet thread” is tiqvat chut hashani. The word tiqvah, a cord, is elsewhere the ordinary Hebrew word for hope, from a verb meaning to wait or stretch. Scarlet dye came from the kermes insect and made a colour that would be seen from outside the wall.

“His blood shall be upon his head” is the legal formula for a death a man brings on himself (Leviticus 20:9), and David pronounces it over the Amalekite who claimed to have killed Saul (2 Samuel 1:16). Inside the house the spies take the blood on their own heads.

“Quit” in 1611 meant released or acquitted. This is the third time the secrecy clause is stated (verses 14 and 20, and implied in 17), and it is the only condition that depends on Rahab alone. Her silence is her part of the bargain.

She ties the cord at once, before the men are out of sight and long before the army arrives. Matthew’s genealogy names her as the mother of Boaz: “Salmon begat Booz of Rachab” (Matthew 1:5), placing her in the line of David.

The three days on the mountain do not easily fit “within three days” in 1:11 and “after three days” in 3:2. Many commentators conclude that the spies were sent out before the order of 1:11 was given, and the Book of Joshua tells the two strands side by side.

Four verbs trace the return: returned, descended, passed over, came. Passing over meant crossing the Jordan, which was in flood at harvest (3:15). The two spies swam or waded a river the whole people will soon cross on dry ground.

The spies add a phrase to Rahab’s words: the LORD has delivered the land “into our hands”, the language of military victory. “Faint” is her verb from verse 9, the melting of the inhabitants, carried back across the Jordan in their mouths.