Rahab was a woman who sold her body’s use to make a living–she was a prostitute. A harlot. A hooker. She was also called to more.
If you haven’t read the story (Joshua 1-6), this is how it goes. Moses was given the task of leading God’s people, the Israelites, from Egypt to the east bank of the Jordan River. Moses died at 120 years old. The Lord appeared to Moses’ successor, Joshua son of Nun, and He told Joshua to step up and continue the work He had begun through Moses, to lead the Israelites to Jericho.
The people of Jericho heard that the Lord had given success to the Israelite army who had been winning battles in the wilderness south and east of the Jordan as they were coming up from Egypt. This had the people of Jericho panicked. Joshua sent spies to Jericho to collect reports of the enemy’s plans. The spies went to the house of a Rahab (ENTER: Hero). The king of Jericho caught whiff of the spies and sent his men to Rahab’s house to capture them. Rahab, quick witted as she was, had hidden the spies on her roof. She told the king’s men that the spies had come to her home, but she had no idea where they came from or where they were going, and that they weren’t there anymore. When the king’s men left in search of the spies, Rahab returned to the roof and told the spies that they had the whole town shaken. She knew that the Lord had given them the land. She believed the stories that terrified everyone else, but unlike her fellow townspeople, she recognized that the strength of the army across the Jordan was the Commander of the Lord’s army, He who is “God in heaven and on earth below” (2:11). Her fear of the Lord outweighed her fear of death. She sought God’s mercy, telling the spies to swear to her that no matter what happened to the people of her city, to at least protect her family. The spies said that for all Rahab’s help with their protection they would ensure that her family would be protected: “we will give our lives for yours” (2:14). Rahab let them down by a rope through the window, since she lived in a house that was built into the wall of the city. She tied a scarlet cord on the window that she let the spies out of and sent them to a safe place with a plan for their return to the Israelite camp without being noticed. The spies told Joshua to spare Rahab and her family. A few days later, the Lord’s army came to the walls of Jericho, marched around the city for 7 days, shouted, and the walls of Jericho came crashing down. Everyone in the city was killed except, miraculously, Rahab and her family whose home was built into the walls which were laid waste around them.
Rahab’s story of salvation is so appealing to me. SHE was the hero. SHE saved herself and her family from certain death, SHE hid the spies from the king of Jericho, and SHE was a huge part in the success story that was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Moses, Joshua, and all God’s people. But… SHE was also a prostitute.
God showed Himself to Rahab and she embraced the truth. In Hebrews 11:31, it says “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after being marched around by the Israelites for seven days. By faith the prostitute welcomed the spies in peace and didn’t perish with those who disobeyed.” How could this Canaanite hooker know about the one true God? God’s people saw Him split the waters of the Red Sea so that they could cross on dry ground. They saw him destroy armies, yet they still shook in their boots at the idea of battling some uncommonly large soldiers. Rahab had only heard the rumors. Her fear of the Lord far outweighed any of her other fears or doubts. When reading the scripture, you can almost hear the fear in her voice when she knows in her gut that the Israelites are, in fact, headed to Jericho to destroy her city and her people. However, by witnessing the faith of God’s people and their concomitant actions, she began to believe in God not only as the God of Israel, but also as her God. She acted out of faith to help the kingdom of God and it saved her life. James 2:25 explains that “…a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works in receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”
In Matthew 1:1-6, the genealogy of Jesus Christ is laid out in plain text. In that list of names, Rahab is there. She married a man named Salmon and they had kids, and their kids had kids, and so on…until Mary and Joseph had Jesus. Rahab the prostitute is in the very lineage of Jesus our Savior! She, a sinner like you and me, acted out of obedience and became a part of our salvation story in Christ. She was a new believer. She could have waited on the feeling to say that she was ready to jump into this action, that everything would be okay, but she didn’t. She acted her way into a situation where she had to fully trust God. The Lord worked through yet another broken person to deliver His people to the promised land. Even with the story that she had, Rahab still was able minster to those who were far away from God simply through obedience. There is elegant truth here. No matter the label that had been given to her or her various sins, Rahab’s true identity was found in the God who created and saved her.