Joshua 2:1-7
Under the flax on the roof
The king sends word to bring the men out. She admits they came, says they left at dark and the gate is closing, and sends the pursuit towards the fords while they lie under stalks of flax.
People of the Bible
Rahab
Hid two spies under drying flax, bargained for her whole family, and ended up in the line of the Messiah.
Rahab keeps a house on the city wall of Jericho and is introduced by her trade, which Scripture never softens. When two spies come in, the king’s men are behind them within hours, and she hides the men on her roof and sends the search the wrong way. Then she does the thing that matters: she tells them she knows what happened at the Red Sea forty years ago and that the whole city has been melting with fear ever since, and asks for her father, mother, brothers and sisters to be spared. She gets it in writing, in the form of a scarlet cord.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Rahab
- 01
- 02
Joshua 2:8-14
We heard, and our hearts melted
She recites the Red Sea and the two kings east of the Jordan and says the LORD is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Then she asks for her family by name.
- 03
Joshua 2:15-21
The scarlet cord in the window
She lets them down the wall by the same rope that will mark the house. The terms are exact: the cord in the window, the family inside, and nobody in the street.
- 04
Joshua 6:22-25
Bring out the woman
The walls fall and the two men are sent back in for her household. Everything else in the city is destroyed. She is brought out and settles in Israel.
Why it matters
Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute inside a condemned city who makes a better confession than most of Israel manages in the wilderness. Joshua records that she lived in Israel from that day. Hebrews lists her among the faithful, James uses her as the example of faith that acted, and Matthew puts her in the genealogy of Jesus as the mother of Boaz. Four chapters later Achan hides plunder and his whole household dies, which is the same structure run the other way.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
