Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.
The story of Rahab (Joshua 2:1-24) is an interesting story about fear, fragility, and faith. The story of Israel’s moving into the Promised Land is part of divine-mandated conquest story about a very poor people (Israel) taking on yet another king with a more advanced military (Jericho), helped by a very poor woman (Rahab) who had heard about Israel and the God who had redeemed them and decided to aid their advance by hiding spies who snuck into the city to gain and advantage. After she lied to official guards she asked the spies to show mercy on her and her family. They assured her they would spare their lives – all she had to do was place a red rope outside her window to mark her home. They spared her, she married into the Israelite family, and ended up being in the family lineage of King David (and therefore Jesus). Not bad for a woman of ill repute!
The way I remember being taught this story, and I am sure the orientation from which I have passed it along, is as a redemption story where a woman steeped in sin recognized how good and big God was and decided to repent, which was rewarded with her safety and (unbeknownst to her) a legacy that we are still talking about. She was a prostitute, after all – how much more willfully sinful can you get? We know from the original, Hebrew language used that she wasn’t a cultic prostitute used in acts of worship. Nope, she was simply a woman who men frequented for sex-for-hire. How many men? How many of them were married? How large the wake of sin and shame must have trailed behind her! What an enormously generous and graceful God to excuse such defiance, for surely the law of God written on our hearts must have informed her that she was not adhering to a good moral code. The story, interpreted as such, has surely helped many people realize repentance rooted in faith in God will be rewarded with forgiveness, and that the grace is so complete that our future need not be limited by the mistakes of our past. That is wonderful news, indeed. Yet there is a part of that interpretation that is too narrow in focus. The part about God’s grace is all true, as well as the fact that our past does not forever determine our future. But the way I was taught about the person of Rahab in the above framework is incomplete, and therefore part of the interpretation needs to be reexamined.
Rahab was a prostitute. Every reputable scholar agrees with that. According to modern scholars, however, it would be unwise to think of her as a madame running a brothel at great personal profit. Much more likely is that she was what we would call in our day an indentured servant who was forced into the sex slave trade at an early age to help pay off family debt. One reference suggests that she may have been only ten years old when she was forced into her new role.
Appreciating Rahab as a victim not an immoral woman who enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle based on the freedom of her choices, as biblical scholar Robert B. Coote notes in The New Interpreters Bible Commentary:
“Probably most readers of Joshua who reside in the so-called developed world, or First World, when presented with the story of a prostitute are apt to appropriate it primarily in moral terms. Prostitution is bad, and a prostitute is a morally reprehensible individual; so Rahab must be a questionable character. Thus it is not surprising, such an interpretation might conclude, that she is a Canaanite, and in the end never really better than the rest of her fellow Canaanites. Such an interpretive approach must be abandoned, however, because it fails to take account of the pre-industrial contexts and meaning of prostitution. Furthermore, it lacks any realistic analysis of modern prostitution and its causes, lumping poor and dominated prostitutes together with wealthy and independent prostitutes, even though the former far outnumber the latter, and assuming that prostitutes may simply exercise freedom of choice to engage in “immoral” behavior.”
This view of Rahab changes my interpretation radically. I don’t view her anymore as a defiant sinner who finally decided to turn her life around. I see her as a victim of a system that bound her and would never let her free. I see her recognizing the hope in the stories she had heard about the people of Israel – a very poor people who God had favored. The story of Israel was one of great hope for the dispossessed and great fear for those in power. This view, of course, creates a new challenge for me and people like me who know little about being oppressed, and are largely blind to the power we have enjoyed and unwittingly perpetuated in our present time. Rahab was desperate for hope and took an enormous risk on the God she had heard about through the rumors spreading through the city. Was she a fan of Jericho? No – the city leaders and plenty of men had abused her for many years. The system perpetually failed her, and the people who comprised that system did nothing to challenge it. Yet she wasn’t going to sell out for just anyone – she still had a life to live and a family to help support. She was risking on Israel’s God, and on the two spies who claimed to represent that God. Rahab deserves her spotlight as a courageous heroine. Lucky for her, the people she protected represented Israel’s God faithfully.
We don’t know the names of the spies. We just know that they recognized what was before them. They could have blown off the request, and instead appealed to God’s decree that everybody be wiped out – let God sort out the good from the bad once they are dead…. But they didn’t. They stayed true to their word perhaps because they were simply grateful, and maybe more than that – they resonated with her plight as a slave, and were deeply confident that God was on the side of the oppressed, and therefore on the side of those who chose to help the oppressed as well. Rahab took a major risk. They did, too, as they recognized the oppression when they saw it and were willing to do something about it even though there could be significant backlash. They reported what happened and made their “deal” known. Lucky for them and Rahab, others recognized the same reality and chose to defend poor, abused Rahab.
Is this story relevant to us today or simply an interesting anecdote from the distant past? I think it was included in the narrative for a range of reasons. Rahab was oppressed and was eventually rescued by the people who served a God who was/is on the side of the oppressed. Rahab was a Canaanite – not Jewish! – which means early in the history of Israel, Gentile inclusion was not only present, but became a contributor to the gene pool that would eventually produce King David and Jesus of Nazareth. Being on the side of the oppressed and making room for them in the people of God seems like two critical take-aways. But who are the oppressed? What is the system that oppresses? What can be done today to help?
I am proud of so many things about being a citizen of the United States. One of the things I admire is that our founding documents recognized that we would always be a work in progress, that we endeavor to be a more perfect union. We’re not there yet, we never will be, and that’s okay since we know we are fallible human beings and that changing times present new challenges. Honestly recognizing our own history helps us move forward. The problem of oppression has been part of our past, as Greenspoon notes:
As in the book of Joshua, debt, slavery, and extermination played an important role in the development of American identity and racial and ethnic classifications. In the colonial period of United States history, indentured servitude, a form of debt slavery, played a significant role in helping thousands of needy people, almost entirely young men, emigrate from Britain and begin a new life in America. These debt contracts provided a socially accepted and constructive way for landowners and householders to capitalize on the labor pool available for work in the colonies and for the sons of the poor to find a new dignity in the independence they soon achieved. At the same time, in using the debt contract to bootstrap themselves to prosperity, they became part of the advancing tide of deception, mayhem, and dispossession that confronted the Native American populace.
In the highlands of Central and South America, European colonists put Native Americans to work in mines and on vast latifundia as serfs and slaves. Descendants of these groups exist today in large numbers, though often they are poor and discriminated against. In the tropical lowlands, the colonists exterminated or expelled the natives and imported chattel slaves from Africa, mainly for sugar and later cotton production. This labor development led directly to the definition of “whites” versus “blacks” that still prevails in the United States. In the temperate climes, colonists drove back the native population and brought in British and northern European indentured servants, whose story eventually contributed to the myth of North American resourcefulness and self-reliance.
Debt slavery and debt prostitution still exist around the world. Debt slavery was outlawed in Pakistan in 1992, but is still common there, for example, on sugar plantations. Recently the president of Brazil was forced to admit that slavery, outlawed in Brazil in 1888, is common on the orange, coffee, and other plantations of the Amazon region. Most Brazilian slaves indenture themselves to estate owners to pay for the long journey from the northeast of Brazil. Once on location, they are forced to buy all their needs from the estate owner and soon find it impossible to repay their debt, which only continues to grow. In a similar way, prostitutes are frequently enslaved in East Asia and other parts of the world.
It may come as more of a surprise that slaves are still found in the United States. Recently state officials in Los Angeles raided a sweatshop housing seventy-four immigrant Thai workers, mostly women, being paid slave wages for seventeen hours of work a day, supposedly toward paying off their fares to America. The state figured they were owed $3.5 million in back-pay, but instead laid plans to deport them, against the desire of many locals that all seventy-four be given green cards—in other words, be treated the way Rahab was treated by Joshua. As with many such attempts to enforce the law, this incident was regarded as a sign of the much wider practice of peonage and prostitution among poor Asian immigrants in southern California.
In comparable ways, such practices could be verified in many other parts of the country. The picture is complicated by a recent case in Chicago in which a woman was charged with selling her child to pay off a drug debt. With the reformist values represented in Joshua 2, God would attack the creditor, pay the woman’s debt, and redeem the child. In Chicago, the public faulted all three parties in the case—dealer, woman, and child—but focused most attention on the mother’s wrongdoing, as though Rahab were most at fault because she is a prostitute.
When interpreting biblical texts, it is often worthwhile to identify the protagonists not with most of the people in the church, but with others whose lives are more like those in the text. The examples of forced indebtedness mentioned here represent a burden that has weighed on the poor for at least four millennia, and one that will, it seems, continue in more or less the same guise for the foreseeable future. Those who interpret Scripture in churches that are not poor need to recognize how this text (and many others) resonates with the experience of the poor.
By the same token, even within the church there are many, especially women, who, while not slaves, are oppressed by coercion of one kind or another. Thus in satisfying the needs of others they are unable to maintain their own importance and well-being.
The above is not easy to hear, let alone embrace as actually true. It is far easier to look the other way and say to ourselves that we are the best nation in all the world and we wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The thing is, we can still hold such sentiments and at the same time wonder about how we can make our great nation even better for everyone here. To ask such challenging questions is actually a sign of love for our country, not disdain. Discovering how we can best meet the ideals expressed in our founding documents is a truly holy endeavor, one that requires good, loving people to act on what they see. Many ministries of our church are examples of this way of thinking. The Food Pantry gives away approximately 1,000 meals every month. The fact that we have such a ministry is a signal that there is a problem in our community where some are not able to afford food to get them to the end of the month. For the people we serve, many of them are forced to make a choice between paying for medication, rent, utilities, or food. Statistically, we know there is a problem. Just because we may be better at feeding people in our country than other countries doesn’t mean we should stop looking for the underlying system and seek to change it, right?
My friend Jennifer Palmer works with a very vulnerable population right here in Napa – the homeless. A few years ago, she risked losing grant money and her job when she recognized that the approach she and her team originally got approved to do wasn’t the best solution. She put herself on the line and did the wise thing anyway, and it helped an oppressed segment of our community find relief.
Where do we go from here? One thing might be to embrace the idea that identifying areas we need to improve is not unpatriotic. Another thing would be to embrace the idea that God is on the side of the oppressed. Another thing would be to embrace the idea that even though we may not be consciously oppressive (we’re good people!), we live in a culture where systems have developed for a wide range of reasons that for some people are oppressive, and since we are part of that system, we are in some way complicit if we do or say nothing. Yet another thing we might be wise to do is to look around and wonder who might be experiencing oppression in our community? Hint: look for the signs of “ouch!”, where people are crying out. They are probably not making it up for the sake of attention. Once identified, perhaps taking time to listen for understanding and then partnering with them to discover the causes and solution would be a very Jesus thing to do.
May you see with new eyes the beautiful, wonderful, complex world, nation, and community in which we live, and be grateful. May you also have courage to recognize where things can and should be improved and do something about it – out of love and gratitude for your beloved community. May we seek God’s mind and share God’s heart as we welcome God’s Spirit to lead us toward that better, more perfect union. Amen.
Notes to Nerd Out On…
From the Yale Anchor Bible Dictionary (Leonard Greenspoon):
RAHAB (PERSON) [Heb rāḥāb (רָחָב)]. The story of Rahab is told in the first part of Joshua 2 and the latter part of Joshua 6. In its present context, this narrative is embedded in the account of the Israelite conquest of Jericho. Rahab is introduced as a “harlot” (Hebrew zônâ) in Josh 2:1 (so also 6:17, 25; in 2:3 and 6:23, only the name Rahab appears). Two spies, dispatched from Shittim by Joshua, enter her house. She hides them from the ruler of Jericho, thus saving their lives. She acknowledges the power of the Lord and extracts from the spies the promise that she and her family will be saved when the Israelites overwhelm her city. She is told to hang a scarlet cord from her window as a sign that her household is to be spared. Several verses in chap. 6 relate that Joshua kept this agreement. At the time of Jericho’s conquest, Rahab and her family, alone of the city’s inhabitants, are spared. They were taken outside of the camp. A final note (6:25) records that “she dwelt in Israel to this day.”
Rahab’s name comes from a root meaning “to be wide or broad.” It appears to be the shortened form of a theophoric name (cf., for example, Rehabiah, 1 Chr 23:17; 24:21). The exact nature of Rahab’s occupation has been the subject of considerable controversy. Most interpretators now see her as a “secular” prostitute without any cultic or sacred connections. Not only is this in keeping with the biblical description, but there was a Hebrew term (qĕdēšâ) available to the author had he wanted to highlight her status as a “sacred” prostitute. The use of the term “innkeeper” in certain Jewish traditions may be seen as an attempt to improve upon her professional standing, but that is not necessarily the case.
The story as it stands contains no indication of what motivated Rahab to risk her life on behalf of the Israelite spies. We are probably meant to connect this action with her affirmation of Yahweh’s power. That affirmation, found in Josh 2:8–11 and thoroughly Deuteronomistic in language and theology, is widely regarded as a late element in what otherwise seems to be fairly early material. In a pre-Deuteronomistic stage, Rahab and her family may have been identified with that segment of the Jericho population that opposed the royal establishment and could be expected to respond positively to the invading Israelites.
The survival of Rahab and her family “to this day” suggests that there is an etiological element in the origin and subsequent development of this story. Perhaps, a well-defined group of her descendants could be singled out for some time among the Israelites. That group would obviously have a large stake in preserving Rahab’s exploits.
Other elements can also be detected in the diverse traditions that have gone into this account. For example, the narrative concerning Rahab has been identified as one of several spy stories that the OT contains. Moreover, Rahab’s role must be seen in light of the type of warfare Israel was waging. It was holy war, under divine command. Rahab’s statement was as much an affirmation to Israel as to herself: with God on their side, the Israelites could not fail to be victorious. For her assistance, the absolute ban (ḥērem) on Jericho could be waived.
According to some, the essence of the Rahab story is contained in chap. 2, while the verses in chap. 6 form a not wholly consistent afterthought. It is noted, for example, that her house, although “built into the city wall” (2:15), somehow still stood after the walls fell (see 6:22). However, the entire Rahab narrative exhibits many unexpected features—not the least of which is the aid provided by the prostitute herself—and the dramatic and humorous effect of the story taken as a whole survives (and perhaps even thrives on) architectural and other incongruities.
The relatively few verses devoted to Rahab in the OT stimulated an amazingly rich exegetical tradition in both Judaism and Christianity. She was widely depicted as a proselyte or convert to the monotheistic faith of Israel. In Judaism, she could then be portrayed as one of the most pious converts—a worthy wife of Joshua and the ancestor of prophets.
A parallel, but distinctly Christian development, is found in Matt 1:5 where a Rahab is identified as the wife of Salmon and the mother of Boaz. This accords to Rahab a prominent position in the genealogy of “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Inasmuch as Matthew does not specifically link “his” Rahab with the harlot of the book of Joshua, and while the Greek text of Matthew preserves a distinctive spelling of the proper name (rachab, raabelsewhere), it is possible that this is another Rahab. However, the appearance and identity of three other women from the OT (Tamar, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah [i.e., Bath-sheba]) in the genealogy of Jesus make it virtually certain that we are dealing with only one Rahab in both Testaments. This is clearly the case in the other two NT references to “Rahab the harlot”: Heb 11:31, where Rahab’s survival is credited to her faith, and Jas 2:25, in which Rahab exemplifies the dictum that “man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (so v 24).
The role Rahab plays in Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions (many other examples could be cited) is larger than that attributed to her in the OT itself. This is not to say that she is an unimportant figure in the Bible; by her actions, she both preserved her own family and epitomized the sort of faith that the Israelites themselves would have to display to preserve the land and heritage God had promised them. For further discussion, see DBSup 5: 1065–92.
Bibliography
Newman, M. 1985. Rahab and the Conquest. Pp. 167–81 in Understanding the Word, ed. J. T. Butler. JSOTSup 37. Sheffield.
Tucker, G. M. 1972. The Rahab Saga (Joshua 2). Pp. 66–86 in The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays, ed. J. M. Efird. Durham, NC.
The New Interpreter’s Bible (Robert B. Coote):
Joshua 2:1–24, Rahab’s Help
Commentary
The story of Rahab is the story of her father’s house, as she repeats (2:12, 18; cf. 6:25): father, mother, brothers, sisters, and all who belong to them (2:13, 18; 6:23)—indeed, her entire extended family (6:23; the NRSV translates the phrase “father’s house” [בית אב bêt ʾāb] as “family”). The mention of Rahab’s mother next to her father reflects the subverting of patriarchal households in Josiah’s reform. Rahab’s family’s fate is tied to her own, not because as the wealthiest member of the family she provides for the rest of them, as some have suggested, but for just the opposite reason: It has fallen to her as a mere daughter to help supply her family’s dire need through the unwanted and demeaning necessity of prostitution, for it is the poverty of her extended household that has forced her into prostitution in the first place.
There are several reasons besides the deuteronomistic Passover basis of this narrative for assuming that Rahab is a prostitute because her family is in debt. Poverty was by far the most common cause of prostitution in the ancient world, as it is in our world as well. Most of the story works like many of the folkloristic narratives of the Bible, by dealing in stereotypical extremes. Rahab takes the side of the “outside agitators,” on the extreme margins of society, against the king, at the extreme pinnacle of society. She advises the spies to escape to the hills, the traditional refuge of outlaws against royal authority. Her story is basically a folk narrative about poor people against kingly power, not about a well-off, if socially marginal, sexual escort. The narrative’s characters represent stock figures rather than nuanced individuals: a typical prostitute and her family, a typical king, typical outlaw spies. Moreover, the only reason why the prostitute’s family is brought into the story is that her story is their story—her prostitution reflects their poverty, and their poverty in all likelihood means their indebtedness. The story is adopted to appeal to debtor families who, far from condemning Rahab because of her prostitution or her act of deception, would sympathize with her and her family as fellow indigents and cheer her on as she dares to make fools out of the king and his men, to whom her family would have owed their debts.
There is no indication that Rahab owns the house she resides in, as is often assumed. It is probably her father’s house, since the rest of her family are assumed to be living in Jericho. The house would have been kept in the family in part through Rahab’s prostitution. The phrase “the house of a prostitute” in v. 1 does not require that the prostitute own the house; the phrase “your house” in v. 18 does not occur in the Hebrew text, which has only “inside the house” (אליך הביתה ʾēlayik habbaytâ). There is no reason to regard Rahab as a “madame,” as some do, or an innkeeper, as later tradition sometimes attempted to suggest (see the note to 2:1 and 6:17 in the NIV). Rahab’s prostitution is the narrator’s way of addressing the issue of indebtedness, for in most instances in the ancient world prostitution alternated with debt slavery. Often, if a poor family did not submit to one alternative, it was forced to submit to the other, if not to both. Rahab represents the indebted, as we might expect in a deuteronomistic text highlighting Passover, and her deliverance and the deliverance of her father’s entire house in conjunction with the slaughter of their creditors are tantemount to the remission of their debts.
The basic story of the prostitute against the king has been co-opted by the deuteronomistic writers for its populist appeal. Most of the narrative assumes that Rahab and her family are on the side of the spies and opposed to the king and his henchmen. In this aspect, the story pits the poor against the rich, the marginal against the dominant, and Rahab belongs on the side of the poor Israelites. The deuteronomist is opposed to all local warlords and minor rulers, like those featured throughout the narrative of conquest and enumerated in 12:9–24, a list headed by the king of Jericho. These represent the likes of Josiah’s adversaries, the potent oppressors of Josiah’s poor subjects and the target of his law of debt remission. In origin, the story tells about collusion between disaffected insurgents and a disaffected prostitute who have an interest in joining forces but who need to give guarantees that can be trusted. For this reason, the bulk of the narrative details the dialogue between spies (called messengers in 6:17, 25) and a prostitute as they negotiate the risky business of agreeing to terms and taking the requisite oaths (2:9a, 12–21).
In contrast to such a theme, however, in a few lines Rahab refers to herself as one with the king (2:9b–11). These lines have been added to the basic story by the deuteronomistic historian, in line with the conceptual polarization of Israelite and Canaanite. They interrupt the thread of Rahab’s opening to her parley with the spies: “I know Yahweh has given you the land … so, since I have dealt kindly with you, swear.…” The first of the interjected phrases, “that dread of you has fallen on us” (v. 9b), and the rest of vv. 10–11 have numerous deuteronomistic parallels, especially in Deuteronomy and Joshua. Yahweh, the God of heaven and earth, promotes the interests of the “nation” of the chosen grantees against the other nations of the earth. In this aspect, the story pits the supposed Israelite nation against the Canaanite nations, and Rahab belongs on the side of the Canaanites rather than the Israelites (her “us,” “we,” and “our” include the king and his men). The flax drying on the roof of Rahab’s house is the first direct indication that events are occurring during the time of Passover. Flax was harvested and laid out to dry just before the barley harvest, and, as reckoned by the agricultural calendar, it was the barley harvest that marked the time of Passover.
Rahab refers to two causes of her people’s fear: the drying up of the sea at Passover and the slaughter of the Amorite kings, Sihon and Og. It is partly ironic that in this speech she mentions the Passover—and mentions it first—since it is in the context of Passover and the debt remission it validates that the rest of her story puts her on the side of the Israelite poor. Looked at another way, however, it is appropriate. Having completed the new trek through the Jordan on dry land, Joshua constructs the cairn of stones at Gilgal to commemorate the crossing on dry land (“dry” [יבשׁ yābēš] is repeated three times) so that all the peoples of the earth may know that Yahweh is mighty and so that they may learn, like the Israelites, to fear Yahweh (4:22–24). In the deuteronomistic view, for both Rahab and Joshua the purpose of crossing on dry land is to put fear in the hearts of the nations so that they will collapse in the face of Joshua—that is, so that they are forced to acknowledge the justice of Israel’s liberation from Egypt. This is what Joshua comments on when the spies report to him (vv. 23–24), even though they have spent three days scouting out the hill country as well.
The phrase “inhabitants of the land” can be and was construed in two ways, only one of which applied in the folk narrative. The Hebrew translated “inhabitants” (יושׁבים yôšĕbîm) means, literally, “the ones who sit.” In many passages, it can refer either to rulers who sit on thrones (e.g., Amos 1:5: “I will cut off the enthroned one [NRSV, inhabitants] from Emeq-aven, and the one who holds the scepter from Beth-eden”) or to the strong who “sit” on their estates as the wealthy landowning class (e.g., the “lords” of Philistia and Canaan in Exod 15:14–15; note the parallels, “chiefs” and “leaders”). This is the meaning of the phrase in the folk narrative, which stresses the gulf between the rich (not “inhabitants,” but “landowners”) and the poor. The second phrase in v. 9b, “all the landowners of the country melt in fear before you,” is likely original to the folk narrative, since it is not deuteronomistic but is identical to the popular poetic line in Exod 15:15 (NRSV, “all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away”). From the perspective of Rahab’s deuteronomistic avowals, however, for which the distinction between Israelite and Canaanite is primary, the phrase probably was taken to mean “inhabitants,” as though “Canaanite” were a national category embracing all people regardless of social class, including women and children. From this perspective, king and prostitute, the richest and the poorest in the town, belonged to the same category of people.
As in the rest of Joshua, the LXX often represents a different Hebrew original from the MT. In several places in Joshua 2, the LXX seems more in tune with the folk narrative, in which the spies come to the town to make contacts there, than the deuteronomistic use of it. In the LXX of v. 2, the king is told that some spies have come to search out the town, not the land. In v. 13, the LXX has “the house of my father,” again the social unit responsible for covering family debts, instead of the MT’s “my father” at the head of the list of individuals. In v. 18, the LXX has “if we come to the edge of the town” rather than “come to the land” (NIV, “enter the land”; NRSV, “invade the land”). The idea that in origin the story applied only to some town fits with 6:17, 25, where the spies are called “messengers,” as though they had had business with someone in the town. Finally, the long phrase in v. 15b, “for her house was on the outer side of the town wall and she resided within the wall itself,” does not occur in the LXX and seems to be a late explanatory addition that accords poorly with the fall of Jericho’s walls and survival of Rahab’s house (6:20, 22). It is sometimes suggested that Rahab’s house stood miraculously while the rest of the wall fell down. This is unlikely, since it finds no association or resonance elsewhere in the text.
As already indicated, the red cord hung out by Rahab to protect her family from the impending slaughter is intentionally reminiscent of the blood of the pascal lamb, which protected the Israelite debt slaves at Passover (Exod 12:7, 13). Even this quasi-liturgical motif could have played a role in the original folk narrative, if conceived in terms of the Passover feast as a family rite rather than the state rite it becomes in deuteronomistic legislation.
Thus the historian conceives a role for both Rahabs: the Rahab who represents the impoverished in social terms and the Rahab who represents the Canaanites in national terms. The one is meant to appeal to the poor debtors among Josiah’s subjects, the other to “Canaanite” clients of Josiah’s landed elite opponents who might be enticed to submit to Josiah’s sovereign command.
Reflections
1. Probably most readers of Joshua who reside in the so-called developed world, or First World, when presented with the story of a prostitute are apt to appropriate it primarily in moral terms. Prostitution is bad, and a prostitute is a morally reprehensible individual; so Rahab must be a questionable character. Thus it is not surprising, such an interpretation might conclude, that she is a Canaanite, and in the end never really better than the rest of her fellow Canaanites. Such an interpretive approach must be abandoned, however, because it fails to take account of the pre-industrial contexts and meaning of prostitution. Furthermore, it lacks any realistic analysis of modern prostitution and its causes, lumping poor and dominated prostitutes together with wealthy and independent prostitutes, even though the former far outnumber the latter, and assuming that prostitutes may simply exercise freedom of choice to engage in “immoral” behavior.
As in the book of Joshua, debt, slavery, and extermination played an important role in the development of American identity and racial and ethnic classifications. In the colonial period of United States history, indentured servitude, a form of debt slavery, played a significant role in helping thousands of needy people, almost entirely young men, emigrate from Britain and begin a new life in America. These debt contracts provided a socially accepted and constructive way for landowners and householders to capitalize on the labor pool available for work in the colonies and for the sons of the poor to find a new dignity in the independence they soon achieved. At the same time, in using the debt contract to bootstrap themselves to prosperity, they became part of the advancing tide of deception, mayhem, and dispossession that confronted the Native American populace.
In the highlands of Central and South America, European colonists put Native Americans to work in mines and on vast latifundia as serfs and slaves. Descendants of these groups exist today in large numbers, though often they are poor and discriminated against. In the tropical lowlands, the colonists exterminated or expelled the natives and imported chattel slaves from Africa, mainly for sugar and later cotton production. This labor development led directly to the definition of “whites” versus “blacks” that still prevails in the United States. In the temperate climes, colonists drove back the native population and brought in British and northern European indentured servants, whose story eventually contributed to the myth of North American resourcefulness and self-reliance.
Debt slavery and debt prostitution still exist around the world. Debt slavery was outlawed in Pakistan in 1992, but is still common there, for example, on sugar plantations. Recently the president of Brazil was forced to admit that slavery, outlawed in Brazil in 1888, is common on the orange, coffee, and other plantations of the Amazon region. Most Brazilian slaves indenture themselves to estate owners to pay for the long journey from the northeast of Brazil. Once on location, they are forced to buy all their needs from the estate owner and soon find it impossible to repay their debt, which only continues to grow. In a similar way, prostitutes are frequently enslaved in East Asia and other parts of the world.
It may come as more of a surprise that slaves are still found in the United States. Recently state officials in Los Angeles raided a sweatshop housing seventy-four immigrant Thai workers, mostly women, being paid slave wages for seventeen hours of work a day, supposedly toward paying off their fares to America. The state figured they were owed $3.5 million in back-pay, but instead laid plans to deport them, against the desire of many locals that all seventy-four be given green cards—in other words, be treated the way Rahab was treated by Joshua. As with many such attempts to enforce the law, this incident was regarded as a sign of the much wider practice of peonage and prostitution among poor Asian immigrants in southern California.
In comparable ways, such practices could be verified in many other parts of the country. The picture is complicated by a recent case in Chicago in which a woman was charged with selling her child to pay off a drug debt. With the reformist values represented in Joshua 2, God would attack the creditor, pay the woman’s debt, and redeem the child. In Chicago, the public faulted all three parties in the case—dealer, woman, and child—but focused most attention on the mother’s wrongdoing, as though Rahab were most at fault because she is a prostitute.
When interpreting biblical texts, it is often worthwhile to identify the protagonists not with most of the people in the church, but with others whose lives are more like those in the text. The examples of forced indebtedness mentioned here represent a burden that has weighed on the poor for at least four millennia, and one that will, it seems, continue in more or less the same guise for the foreseeable future. Those who interpret Scripture in churches that are not poor need to recognize how this text (and many others) resonates with the experience of the poor.
By the same token, even within the church there are many, especially women, who, while not slaves, are oppressed by coercion of one kind or another. Thus in satisfying the needs of others they are unable to maintain their own importance and well-being.
2. Rahab is mentioned twice in the New Testament. In Heb 11:31, Rahab becomes one in the train of forebears who survived or prospered by faith, and in James she is a model of those who are “justified by works and not by faith alone” (Jas 2:24). The partial contrast between these two texts (Hebrews expounds on faith, while James advocates works) points up inevitable partiality of interpretation, even for New Testament writers dealing with the Scriptures. Nevertheless, these texts also complement each other. Brief though they are, both attribute to Rahab the same faith marked by the same work: safeguarding the Israelite spies. Thus in concert they articulate the familiar biblical theme that “faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:17, 26). From this biblical perspective, the figure of Rahab reminds the interpreter that faith may be expounded in terms not only of doctrine, but also of lives lived. Moreover, the lives of the faithful include not only deeds performed, but also perseverence and patience maintained in the face of adversity. To be faithful is both to do and to endure, and the vector of a person’s faith manifests itself through both.
Joshua 2:1-24 (NLT)
Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove.[a] He instructed them, “Scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho.” So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night.
2 But someone told the king of Jericho, “Some Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” 3 So the king of Jericho sent orders to Rahab: “Bring out the men who have come into your house, for they have come here to spy out the whole land.”
4 Rahab had hidden the two men, but she replied, “Yes, the men were here earlier, but I didn’t know where they were from. 5 They left the town at dusk, as the gates were about to close. I don’t know where they went. If you hurry, you can probably catch up with them.” 6 (Actually, she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them beneath bundles of flax she had laid out.) 7 So the king’s men went looking for the spies along the road leading to the shallow crossings of the Jordan River. And as soon as the king’s men had left, the gate of Jericho was shut.
8 Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up on the roof to talk with them. 9 “I know the Lord has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. 10 For we have heard how the Lordmade a dry path for you through the Red Sea[b] when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed.[c] 11 No wonder our hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below.
12 “Now swear to me by the Lord that you will be kind to me and my family since I have helped you. Give me some guarantee that 13 when Jericho is conquered, you will let me live, along with my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all their families.”
14 “We offer our own lives as a guarantee for your safety,” the men agreed. “If you don’t betray us, we will keep our promise and be kind to you when the Lord gives us the land.”
15 Then, since Rahab’s house was built into the town wall, she let them down by a rope through the window. 16 “Escape to the hill country,” she told them. “Hide there for three days from the men searching for you. Then, when they have returned, you can go on your way.”
17 Before they left, the men told her, “We will be bound by the oath we have taken only if you follow these instructions. 18 When we come into the land, you must leave this scarlet rope hanging from the window through which you let us down. And all your family members—your father, mother, brothers, and all your relatives—must be here inside the house. 19 If they go out into the street and are killed, it will not be our fault. But if anyone lays a hand on people inside this house, we will accept the responsibility for their death. 20 If you betray us, however, we are not bound by this oath in any way.”
21 “I accept your terms,” she replied. And she sent them on their way, leaving the scarlet rope hanging from the window.
22 The spies went up into the hill country and stayed there three days. The men who were chasing them searched everywhere along the road, but they finally returned without success.
23 Then the two spies came down from the hill country, crossed the Jordan River, and reported to Joshua all that had happened to them. 24 “The Lord has given us the whole land,” they said, “for all the people in the land are terrified of us.”