Thread of Hope (Joshua 2:1-24)

“By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.” (Hebrews 11:31)

Our Sermon series on Joshua continues with the story of Rahab. Rahab is one of many people under judgement. What is more she is a prostitute. Yet, she believes in the God of Israel, and she chooses to be on his side. In so doing, she wins salvation for herself and her whole family and ultimately becomes the great-great-grandmother of King David.

Who is it that can be saved? Anyone, if they will only have faith in the God of Jesus Christ and give their allegiance to him.

A thread of hope (Joshua 2:1-24)

“Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the plans of the wicked, and break the teeth of the ungodly.” Back in March, this is how the US Secretary of War prayed for those whom he believed deserved no mercy. “By the blast of your anger, let the wicked perish …and [be] delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them”.¹

It is an unsettling comparison to have to draw, but in Deuteronomy chapter 7, we read words that set the scene for the entire plotline of the book of Joshua, and raise a question for that book to answer. The question is this: will the book of Joshua come straight out of the Secretary of War’s playbook? “When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations … seven nations stronger than you – and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally”, we read in Deuteronomy. “Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them … for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods … If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you … [hesed in Hebrew] he will love you [hesed again] and bless you and increase your numbers …” (Deuteronomy 7:1-4, 12-13).

And so, when we come to read the book of Joshua, we may approach it with some trepidation. How is the conquest going to play out? Are we going to be reading what amounts to a record of genocide?

Well, in the story of Rahab, in the second chapter of the book, there is a thread of hope, that turns out to be more like a strong cord of hope. Rahab is referred to several times in the New Testament – in Matthew, in Hebrews and in James – where she serves as a parade example of someone who was undeserving of mercy – not because she was a prostitute, but because she was a Canaanite, part of a people group who by their evildoing had brought the disaster of dispossession upon themselves, again according to the book of Deuteronomy. (There – in Deuteronomy 9:4 – we read that “it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before Israel”.)

But in reading Joshua chapter 2, we find that there is a thread of hope running through it, arising from what Rahab says – she confesses faith in the LORD – and from what she does – she shows kindness to the Israelite spies. Even so, at the end of the chapter, we are left in suspense, not knowing whether that thread will hold, or whether it will break. The answer to that question will come later on in the book of Joshua. And the answer is much more than of historical interest. This is not merely a history lesson, because it speaks to the issue of what hope there can be for the rest of us, who by nature are “strangers to the covenants of the promise” (Ephesians 2:12) made by the LORD to Abraham and his descendants.

So first let us consider what Rahab says. “I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us … our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.” (Joshua 2:9-11).

The first thing to notice here is that Rahab speaks of the LORD. Now whenever you see ‘the LORD’ written like that in the pages of the Old Testament translated into English, please remember that you are looking at the personal name of the God of Israel, as first he revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush, saying ‘I am who I am – I will be who I will be’ (Exodus 3:14-15). In ancient near-eastern culture, every nation had its own god or gods, and every god had its nation. All the nations boasted that their god was the greatest, and had given them the land that they occupied, and disputes over this were commonly settled on the field of battle. So the confession of Moses that “the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below – there is no other” (Deuteronomy 4:39) is not entirely surprising, although the idea of there being only one God is distinctive. The words of King Solomon’s prayer, later on in the Old Testament, follow a similar pattern. “O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below – you who keep your covenant of love [hesed in Hebrew] with your servants” (1 Kings 8:23).

Yet there was far more at stake for Rahab than there was for Moses or Solomon in saying, as she did, that ‘The LORD your God is God in heaven and earth’. In these words there was a costly recognition that the only true God, the one who made everything in heaven and earth, the Creator of everything that has been made, was the God of a nation other than her own. These words are in effect a transfer of Rahab’s allegiance away from the Canaanite gods to the LORD. They constitute a confession of faith on her part.

That is what Rahab says in chapter 2, and now let us consider what she does. Having effectively hidden the Israelite spies in the attic, she misled the emissaries of the king of Jericho, her own king, into thinking the spies had come and gone – ‘they went that-a-way!’ Rahab’s action in doing this is not treated as an instance of breaking the commandment of God against bearing false witness, either here in this chapter, or anywhere else in the Bible.² Rather, in hiding the Israelite spies, Rahab is clearly depicted in the text as having literally saved their lives. In Joshua chapter 2, verse 12, she speaks of this action as one of kindness. “Please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will … save us from death” (Joshua 2:12-13).

It is kindness that Rahab shows, or to put this in a different way, it is love, since the Hebrew word translated here as kindness is hesed, the word that is used throughout the Old Testament, which I have been highlighting in this sermon, for the covenant love of the LORD for his people. So in what Rahab says, she has faith – that, by the way, is what we are told in Hebrews chapter 11, and in what she does, she has works – that is what we are reminded of by James in the second chapter of his letter. And the tables of expectation are turned, since it is the Canaanite woman, not the Israelite spies, who first speaks of hesed, covenant love. By her words and her actions, it appears that Rahab has changed her allegiance.

Nevertheless, Rahab’s fate remains undecided right through to the end of Joshua chapter 2. The spies, certainly, promise that she will be protected. They swore an oath to protect her and her family, provided she tied a scarlet cord in the window and of her house, and brought her family within its four walls. This was the literal thread of hope they offered her.

But what would the LORD make of this arrangement? What would he do and say, he who had previously said ‘Destroy them totally; make no treaty with them; show them no mercy; do not intermarry with them … otherwise the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you’ (Deuteronomy 7:2-3)? Will he strike down the Canaanite woman and those who struck a deal with her?

We have to wait until Joshua chapter 6 to find out. There we read that, after the walls of Jericho had fallen, the spies whose lives had been saved by Rahab went into her house and brought her and her family out, and put them in a safe place “outside the camp of Israel” (Joshua 6:23). The scarlet cord did its job, and the thread of her hope remained intact. Nor did the anger of the LORD burn against Israel as a result of the deal that was made with her, the warnings in Deuteronomy notwithstanding. He showed his mercy to those undeserving of mercy, and he extended his kindness and covenant love past the boundaries of the people of Israel. That is what the LORD did.

The Israelites kept Rahab and her family safe, albeit that they couldn’t quite stretch to permitting them as non-Jews to reside inside their camp, which had to remain ritually pure. This separation notwithstanding, it appears that Rahab later married into Judaism, because in Matthew chapter 1 she is recorded as the wife of Salma, and the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth. And again the LORD relented from his retribution he promised for inter-marriage. Again, that is what the LORD did. He brought her into the people of God, and into the very ancestry of the promised Messiah.

So to have remained “outside the camp” was no hardship for Rahab. It was a safe place for her to be. Again, for us this is no mere history lesson. According to the writer of the book of Hebrews, it is news we can use. “The [Jewish] high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but”, to maintain ritual purity, “the carcasses are burned outside the camp”, he explained (Hebrews 13:11). “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate”, at a place of execution – Golgotha – chosen to maintain the ritual purity of the city of Jerusalem, “to make the people holy through his own blood” (Hebrews 13:12). This is what the LORD says to us today. The book of Hebrews encourages us to take a leaf out of Rahab’s book, and “go to Jesus outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore” (Hebrews 13:13).

In the context of the Bible as a whole, this is what the story of Rahab in Joshua chapter 2 is hinting at. The mercy of God may be found outside the camp of Israel, by those who have been judged by others, or who think of themselves, as unworthy of mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgement. It is mercy, rather than violence, destruction, anger, and damnation, that is the connecting thread through the book of Joshua, and through the Scriptures from beginning to end, starting with the Old Testament, carrying on through the New, and ending up, if you like, with those words from the book of Hebrews. This is what the LORD says to us today: For as long as a person is with Jesus, that person is perfectly safe outside the camp of whatever ring may have been drawn to exclude them from the covenant love of the LORD. They are as safe as Rahab and her family, because the LORD’s mercy now extends far past the boundaries of Israel, to embrace all who are undeserving, but whose confession of faith and acts of kindness prove their new allegiance. We, like Rahab, may hold on to, and rely on, the thread of God’s mercy, which however thin it may appear, is in fact the strong cord of his love, and which will never be broken.

1 https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5802042-defense-secretary-pentagon-prayer/amp/

2 This is nothing more than common sense. No-one could ever seriously suggest that those who hid resistance fighters, spies, or their Jewish neighbours from the Nazis ought to have let the German occupiers know what they were doing. No-one could ever seriously suggest that it is dishonest for soldiers to wear camouflage, because it might mislead their enemies.