The Rahab Story as a Narrative Frame

The Rahab story is delivered in two installments. The first episode is found in chapter 2 and portrays her saving the spies; the second episode appears at the end of chapter 6, where the spies save Rahab and her family. In the narrative of Joshua, these two episodes bracket a foundational period of miraculous triumph, which commences with the crossing of the Jordan and concludes with the conquest of Jericho.Footnote ⁶ At a time of the year when the Jordan was most dangerous to ford, the Israelites cross on dry ground. They mark the crossing with a number of ritual-commemorative activities: construction of a monument with stones from the Jordan; circumcision of the males; celebration of the Passover; and cessation of manna and consumption of crops in Canaan. Portrayed as a divine triumph over the inimical forces of chaos, the desiccation of the Jordan mirrors the crossing of the Red Sea, on the one hand, and anticipates the miraculous collapse of Jericho’s walls, on the other.Footnote ⁷ In contrast to these events, the subsequent subjugation of Ai is achieved through natural means (a clever stratagem), and the nation must first suffer devastating defeats:

The section of the narrative framed by the Rahab story devotes disproportionate attention to the cult. The river recedes when the priests bearing the ark enter it, and the walls of Jericho fall when seven priests marching with the ark blow their seven shofars. This material likely represents the work of priestly scribes at the Jerusalem temple who revised an older, much shorter report of the crossing of the Jordan and conquest of Jericho. In this new and improved edition of the account, cultic personnel and paraphernalia play an indispensable role. In stark contrast to the narrative it frames, the Rahab story commemorates the contributions of a Canaanite prostitute and declares that she later enjoyed a place of honor in Israel’s midst (6:25). Undoubtedly, the account of this pivotal moment in the nation’s past would have scandalized priestly sensibilities. We know from numerous Pentateuchal texts that priests were highly anxious about the camp’s purity, and it was presumably a scribe of priestly pedigree who made sure to point out that when the spies rescued Rahab and her family, they placed them outside “the camp of Israel” (6:23).Footnote ⁸

The Place of the Rahab Story in the Narrative

The book of Joshua begins with the nation’s new leader commanding the officers to prepare the nation for the crossing of the river, which will take place “in three days”:

We encounter this same group of officers at the Jordan crossing, which is said explicitly to have occurred precisely after this time period:

The similar formulations in these two passages have misled some scholars to assume that they form an older running narrative into which the Rahab story was inserted at a later point.Footnote ⁹ The interpretation does not hold up to scrutiny: In the first passage the officers are to pass through the camp immediately and command the people to prepare for the Jordan crossing three days from then, while in the second passage the officers wait three days before marching through the camp and issuing orders to the people. Instead of forming a coherent, older narrative thread, the two texts actually contradict each other, and the opposite compositional scenario suggests itself: what we have here is a later scribal attempt to synthesize the Rahab story with the later narrative of the Jordan crossing, with the formulation “in/after three days” implying the exact duration of the reconnaissance mission (see 2:16, 22).Footnote ¹⁰

The Rahab story appears both to be older than the narrative of the Jordan crossing, and to have grown in stages to its present proportions. According to my analysis, its earliest iteration told the backstory to the battle of Jericho and was prefaced directly to it. Both the Rahab story and the battle account represent older portions of chapters 1–7, and they gradually drifted apart as later scribes composed the disparate materias related to the crossing of the Jordan in chapters 3–5.Footnote ¹¹

The Rahab story was composed for, and added directly to, the battle account in chapter 6. As we shall see, it was originally much shorter and did not necessitate the follow-up episode in chapter 6. Recently, Joachim Krause has taken a different approach, arguing that the Rahab story is relatively unified and represents a late development in an older narrative of the Jordan crossing in chapters 1–5.Footnote ¹² However, we can more easily explain the literary evidence if we accept 1) that the Rahab story originated as an early preface to the account of the Jericho battle, and 2) that the narrative of the Jordan crossing in chapters 1–5 represents a later compositional stage.

With regard to the second episode of the Rahab story in chapter 6, the battle account reads more smoothly without the lines related to Rahab; not surprisingly, scholars have long declared them to be supplementary. Below, I have arranged the text to show how the Rahab story presupposes redactions of the battle account. As in the narrative of the Jordan crossing, one redaction assigns an indispensable role to the priests and their trumpets, while, in keeping with the Deuteronomistic program of destruction (ḥerem), another redaction develops the description of the city’s demolition. The oldest substratum of this section is in boldface, while the later lines related to Rahab are indented. Even though the latter are not differentiated below, they likely do not all stem from the same hand.

We will touch upon several notable features of this second episode, yet before doing so, we need take a closer look at the first episode – the account of Rahab hiding two Israelite spies, lying to the king, and then negotiating protection for herself and her family.

A City Besieged

Strangely, the Rahab story has nothing to say about the spies’ activities of scouting or espionage. The first episode begins with Joshua secretly dispatching the men with orders to “go view the land and Jericho.” However, when the men go, the only thing they manage to do is “enter the house of a prostitute named Rahab and spend the night there” (2:1).Footnote ¹³ The king learns that Israelites had infiltrated the city with the intention of “searching out the whole land.” He quickly establishes that they are residing in Rahab’s place and sends soldiers to seize them there.

The succinct narration in 2:1–7 shows, rather than reports (as in vv. 8–14), the heightened state of alarm that Israel’s arrival had provoked among the inhabitants of Jericho. Despite the precautions that Joshua and the spies take to conduct a clandestine mission, their arrival doesn’t go unnoticed. The narrator implies that all the inhabitants of the country are well aware of Israel’s presence on Canaan’s eastern border and nervous about an imminent invasion.

This is precisely what Rahab spells out to the spies in an extended scene that stands at the center of the account:

This scene is likely secondary. As scholars have long observed, the first part of story (vv. 1–7), which ends with Rahab sending the pursuers on a wild-goose chase, continues naturally in the description of Rahab letting the spies down on a rope from her window (vv. 15–16, 21–23):

Not only does the scene in verses 8–14 sever the narrative at this juncture; its language and ideas stand out as an anomaly in the context of the chapter. Acclaiming Yhwh’s hand in Israel’s history, Rahab uses formulations and concepts that presuppose an advanced stage in the formation of the wider biblical narrative, as we saw in our discussions of Sihon and Og (“two Amorite kings,” vv. 8–14) in Parts I and II. The only other place in the account where we find this language is the final line (v. 24), which appears to have been composed as a new conclusion that integrates Rahab’s exact words into the spies’ debriefing.Footnote ¹⁵

The second part of verse 21, which presents Rahab hanging a crimson cord from her window, interrupts the flow of the narrative and is easy to identify as an editorial gloss. It presupposes the supplementary material related to the logistics of Rahab’s rescue (vv. 8–14 + 17–21).Footnote ¹⁶

The announcement in verse 6 that Rahab had concealed the spies on the roof provides an additional clue that the scene in verses 8–14 is secondary. The narrator has already reported in verse 4 that “the woman took the two men and hid them.” (Where she hides them is not said.) While verse 4 flows effortlessly in the narrative and must be part of the earliest version, the announcement in verse 6 is poorly placed. It was likely added by the same hand that composed verses 8–14, which begin with Rahab going up to the men on the roof.

The Masoretic text at 2:4 is literally “she hid him,” and the unexpected singular may be an echo of Exodus 2:2, where Moses’s mother “hid him” (using the same verb). Just as the story of the exodus begins with the courageous defiance of the Egyptian king by Moses’s mother as well as by his sister and the Hebrew midwives, the story of the conquest begins with the courageous defiance of a Canaanite king by a woman. In each case, the women not only act without the help of males but also protect them as passive objects. These parallels may help us understand why later scribes seized on the originally brief account and embellished it: without husband and children, Rahab works maternally to protect the spies, covering them under her stalks of flax and then lying to the king’s men as to their whereabouts. Moreover, the description of her letting the spies down by a rope brings to mind the scene in 1 Sam. 19 in which Michal lets David down by a rope from her window when he, like the spies, is fleeing for his life from a king. In keeping with an assault on hegemonic masculinities that can be identified in many biblical texts, these narratives undermine pretensions of male self-sufficiency by depicting valiant women acting surreptitiously. In their crucial contributions to the nation’s history, they orchestrate directly, and physically, the lives of male figures.Footnote ¹⁷

While the scene in verses 8–14 is most likely supplementary, Rahab’s statements in it about the fear that had consumed Canaan are consistent with the rhetorical purpose of the older account. We are told in verse 7 that as soon as the men took off in pursuit of the spies, the city gate was closed after them. Israel’s arrival obviously had struck fear into the heart of Jericho’s inhabitants and king. Likewise, chapter 6 begins by reporting that Jericho was on lockdown, which Yhwh interprets as a portent of the city’s imminent downfall:

Before the composition of all the disparate material related to the crossing of the Jordan in chapters 3–5, the Rahab story would have segued directly into the battle account. The latter tells how Jericho was “shut up tightly because of the Israelites,” and the Rahab story provides a glimpse from the inside on why this was so.

The battle account focuses on the city’s wall. The remains of an impressive system of fortifications at Jericho could be seen be passers-by in antiquity, and they can still be witnessed today. Although the city was conquered in the sixteenth century BCE during an Egyptian campaign in the region, the authors of the biblical account point to the ruins as physical evidence for – and a monument to – Israel’s inaugural triumph after invading Canaan. This historiographical purpose explains why the authors do not present Joshua engaging the enemy in the field, as he does at Ai in the immediately following episode.Footnote ¹⁸

If the first and most basic purpose of the Rahab story is to explain why Jericho was “shut up tightly,” and therefore why the nation attacks the city in an unconventional manner, we can explain why the spies, instead of continuing their espionage activities, immediately make their way back to Joshua and “tell him everything that had happened to them” (2:21).Footnote ¹⁹ They terminate their reconnaissance mission because it had already provided them with all the intelligence they needed: panic had seized Jericho, and as Yhwh spells out for Joshua, this panic is handwriting on the wall that the city would soon fall.

Edification of a Defeated Nation

The aim of the espionage mission, as I pointed out in Chapter 7, was not to inspect the military establishments in Canaan but to assess the psychological state of the local population. This aim explains why the spies visit the house of Rahab. Due to her private intercourse with diverse clientele, the proprietresses of bordellos and taverns were privy to news and rumors from abroad and intimately aware of the locals’ disposition. For example, according to Hammurabi’s laws, “if criminals [or conspirators] plot in the house of a tavern keeper [sabitum], and she does not capture those criminals and deliver them to the palace, the tavern keeper shall be put to death.”Footnote ²⁰

Presupposing these associations, the supplements to the story portray Rahab approaching the Israelite men before they go to sleep. She divulges to them that the land’s inhabitants were shaking in their sandals in fear of Israel and its god. Her statement divulges the deflation of Canaan’s male inhabitants: “When we heard it, our hearts melted. No longer does a spirit rise in any man because of you! Yhwh your god is indeed god in heaven above and on earth below.”Footnote ²¹

Signs, oracles, prophetic performances, speeches, and rituals that motivate the army or its leaders for an impending engagement are all important features of biblical war commemoration. In addition to serving an immediate narrative function, this discourse on fear and courage has a larger didactic purpose. Thus, Rahab’s reference to the memories of Sihon’s and Og’s defeat resembles the use Moses makes of these same memories throughout Deuteronomy, as he rouses the nation on the eve of war.Footnote ²² Like Moses’s orations in Deuteronomy, a new ending to the Rahab story plays a rhetorical role by having the spies draw a conclusion for Joshua: “Yhwh has given the entire land into our hands; indeed, all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before us!”

Two chapters from the book of Numbers tell of the initial scouting mission conducted by the preceding generation soon after leaving Egypt. The spies’ objective was to find, and to bring back to the national assembly, a sign confirming that Israel would claim certain victory. Likely composed much later than the first iteration of the Rahab story, the account in Numbers differs from this story above all in the failure of the mission. The scouts bring back an “evil report” that demoralizes the nation, and, as punishment, Yhwh sentences the entire generation to death in the wilderness. Paralyzed by fear, the nation stands no chance of victory. The same goes conversely for their enemies, and such is the case as a new generation prepares to invade angst-filled Canaan in the time of Rahab. If even this non-Israelite knew that Canaan was about to be wiped out, all the more reason for Israel to eschew disbelief, which had brought forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

More than any other biblical account, the story of Gideon from the book of Judges is characterized by a profusion of prebattle signs and oracles. Its distinctive quality is due to the work of later scribal hands that transformed a “mighty hero” into an exceedingly trepidatious farmer.Footnote ²³ At every step of the way, Gideon needs signs and demonstrations that he and his men could overpower the enemy. On the eve of battle, the fretful warrior goes down with his servant on a reconnaissance mission into the enemy camp. There, they overhear a soldier describing his dream about the collapse of a tent, which his fellow interprets as a portent of their own defeat: “This is nothing other than the sword of Gideon ben Joash, a man of Israel. Into his hand God has given Midian and all the army!” Gideon had already witnessed many signs that he would triumph over the Midianites and this last sign is what finally emboldens him to begin the battle (Judg. 7:10–15).

As we observe in the Gideon account, the news brought by the spies in the Rahab story galvanizes Joshua’s resolve on the eve of invasion. The nation’s leader has already received an oracle of divine encouragement (1:1–9) and will witness yet another divine sign right before the battle (5:13–15).Footnote ²⁴ The character of Joshua does not suffer from Gideon’s lack of courage; to the contrary, he, like Rahab, is a paragon of valor.

The intended audience of our texts would have been faced with the prospect, and then the fact, of forfeiting to foreign armies the land Joshua had conquered. These texts were written and rewritten for the edification of a defeated nation, and as such, they participate in an elaborate biblical discourse on faith and fear.Footnote ²⁵

Belief and Action

According to Klaus Bieberstein, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar from Germany, the authors of the Rahab story highlighted the harlot’s “confession of faith” and placed it at the center of the account as an illustration of Isaiah’s verdict “If you do not believe, you will not stand” (Isa. 7:9).Footnote ²⁶ Because Rahab believes, she survives, becoming thereby a living “monument” (Denkmal) that witnesses to the nexus between faith and salvation. Bieberstein agrees that the Rahab story participates in a struggle to define Israel’s collective identity, yet it does so, according to his interpretation, by pointing to verbal confessions and “faith/belief” (Glaube) in Yhwh as the basis for belonging.

While this reading may be consistent with influential iterations of Christian theology, it’s difficult to reconcile with the logic of the text itself. Belief isn’t the condition for Rahab’s rescue, let alone her inclusion among the people of Israel. To be sure, the biblical scribes portray Rahab as being confident that Israel will conquer the land, and this confidence stands out against the account of the first espionage mission during the days of Moses. At that time, Yhwh condemned an entire generation to die in the wilderness for its lack of faith:

Here, as elsewhere, Israel’s refusal to believe in Yhwh’s power elicits divine punishment. It would be a flagrant non sequitur, however, to conclude that these texts identify faith as the criterion for membership, as if Israel were a “community of believers.”

Twice in the second episode of the Rahab story, the authors name the heroine’s actions in hiding the spies as the reason for the special treatment she – together with all her family and clans – receives from the conquerors (6:17b, 25b). Even if these lines are late additions to the account, one must explain why their authors did not mention the words she spoke as a testimony to her belief in Israel’s god. It might be argued, in line with the early Christian writings discussed in Chapter 7, that Rahab’s underlying faith prompted her to hide the Israelite men. Even so, the account in Joshua identifies solely her deeds as the grounds for her and her family’s salvation; in stark contrast to many later interpreters, it says nothing about these works as tangible testaments to her “faith.”

Rahab’s report about the fear that had engulfed the local population culminates in a declaration: “Yhwh your god is indeed god in heaven above and on earth below.” (2:11b; cf. Deut. 4:37–39). As we noted in Chapter 7, these words resemble the avowals of Jethro and Naaman. All three figures do not simply state the facts; they also express solidarity. Even if Jethro returns to his own country instead of joining the people of Israel, his declaration reinforces the special quality of his relationship to the nation, which is celebrated in the rituals of commensality with its leaders (Exod. 18:12).Footnote ²⁷ Rahab’s statement about Israel’s god, in the same way, does not in and of itself qualify her for inclusion among the people of Israel. But if she is to be included, she must both demonstrate her loyalty through her actions and interpret them with her words. (Her statement likely belongs to the same compositional level as the lines added to Joshua 6 that describe the honored place she assumes in the nation.)

Consider again the example of Ruth. When Boaz grants special privileges to this Moabite, she is taken aback and wonders why. Boaz responds by pointing to her record of solidarity with Naomi and, by extension, with the people of Israel as a whole:

As in Rahab’s case, Ruth’s reward, both from Boaz and from Yhwh, is merited by her deeds, whereas the words she speaks to Naomi at the beginning of the narrative are the means by which she proclaims her intent and motivation. Even if they are indispensable, they are not the grounds for her inclusion.

In Chapter 7, we compared Rahab’s statement to the testimonies and oaths of loyalty required for naturalization in modern nation-states. The difference is that Rahab’s testimony revolves around Israel’s deity; today, one swears allegiance to a flag. This difference turns out to be not so stark if we remember that the national flags of modernity evolved as secularized incarnations of the deities and religious symbols under whose aegis ancient states operated. The project of peoplehood that the biblical writers conceived has a thoroughgoing theological dimension. The fact that the biblical writers ascribed a central role to their deity does not mean, however, that the form of peoplehood they envisioned is more akin to an assembly of believers than a national body. Even so, a deity that transcends political divisions offered an ideal common point for competing communities to consolidate as one people and form a more perfect union (see the discussion in Part IV).

A New Covenant

The complexity of Rahab’s identity may be embedded already in the earliest formulations of the account, but as the story evolved, the intertextuality with other biblical texts assumed a sharper profile. We notice this not only in Rahab’s testimony but also in her extended negotiations with the spies.Footnote ²⁸ It’s obvious to Rahab that no one stands a chance of surviving the impending devastation and that Canaan’s future clearly lies with Israel. Hence, she not only hides the men but is also eager to persuade them to make a pact with her. She fears that Israel would annihilate her entire family, and we, as readers, know this is what they are about to do, in keeping with the command in Deuteronomy to annihilate all the Canaanites (see Deut. 7 and 20).

Many passages in Joshua do not reflect knowledge of Deuteronomy, and the earliest portrait of Rahab did not present her Canaanite identity as grounds for execution. The present shape of the book, however, is explicitly and repeatedly linked to its predecessor. For example, the Gibeonite account (chaps. 9–10), which we explore in Chapter 9, presupposes the command to annihilate the Canaanites. In this narrative framework, the final form of the Rahab story demonstrates the possibility of suspending the Mosaic decree in the case of someone who stands in undivided solidarity with Israel and proves his/her loyalty when push comes to shove.

The scribes who reworked the account devoted a lot of space to the oath that Rahab demands from the spies (2:8–14, 17–21; see also 6:22), and the reason seems to be that they wanted to address the way in which Rahab becomes part of Israel. Their account reveals paradigmatically how a non-Israelite secures protection and privileges via a proven record of loyalty (notice the length and shrewdness of her lines to the king’s men), which merits a contractual guarantee in the form of an unbreakable oath. Prompting their editorial work was the insight that eloquent affirmations about the power of Israel’s god, and even courageous displays of loyalty, are of limited value if they do not culminate in legally binding guarantees of protection. Such pledges define and formalize the mutual obligations that constitute the bedrock of a political community.Footnote ²⁹

When creating this complex account, the scribes couldn’t help but echo Sinai. Throughout Exodus and Deuteronomy, Yhwh appeals to a record of protecting and saving the nation as the basis for the covenant he makes with the nation. Similarly, Rahab begins by recalling these same salvific deeds of Yhwh (2:9–11), and then makes a case for her own covenant with the nation (beginning with the appropriate formula “and now,” 2:12). In making her case, Rahab invokes her act of “loyalty/hospitality” (ḥesed). Since she risked her life and the lives of her family to save the spies, they now should reciprocate with a quid pro quo, swearing to show her “loyalty” and to “save” her and her family (2:12–13).

In making this new covenant, Rahab demonstrates superb negotiation skills, and perhaps we are to understand that she owes these skills to her profession. The pact with the Israelite men is just as much about her (and her family’s) survival as transactions with clients. The difference is that the former is more enduring and transformative, as she now moves from the margins of one society to the center of another.

Inclusion Versus Integration

We established that Rahab’s belonging presupposes both her deeds and her words. But what more can we say about the nature of the belonging that she procured? In Chapter 7, we saw how Josephus and the rabbis claimed that she was fully integrated into Israelite society, eventually marrying Joshua and becoming the ancestress of important figures in the nation’s history, and the Gospel of Matthew does something similar by grafting her into the family tree of Jesus. Thus, both Jewish and Christian readers imagine Rahab being fully integrated into the life of the nation, but does the account in Joshua suggest that she became a full-fledged member of Israel?

We are told that the spies, after following through with the pact and rescuing Rahab’s family, “left them outside the camp of Israel” (6:23). Although they are no longer a part of the city destined for destruction, they are kept separate from the rest of the nation and not allowed to dwell alongside its members. This line, as I suggested earlier, is likely a gloss added by a priestly scribe who was disturbed by the notion that a Canaanite harlot and her family could have so easily entered the (sacred) space of the camp and thereby jeopardized Israel’s welfare. In contrast to this gloss, the final statement about Rahab proclaims resoundingly:

If Rahab came to live in Israel’s midst, are we to understand that she became a full-fledged member of the nation?

The term “midst” is used often in the book, recurring at key moments in the narrative: Yhwh performs wonders in the Israelites’ midst at the crossing of the Jordan (3:5) and proves that he dwells in their midst by driving out the seven nations that dwell in the Promised Land (3:10). Israel sets up a monument in the nation’s midst for future generations (4:6). In the episode that immediately follows the statement about Rahab, a figure named Achan wrongly keeps some of the war spoils for himself; because these banned items were found in Israel’s midst, they cause a devastating defeat for the nation (7:12–13). That many indigenous outsiders, like Rahab, dwell in their midst is affirmed in the account of Joshua reading the words of Moses to the assembly (8:35). The account of the Gibeonites in chapters 9–10 plays heavily on this theme. It presents a population that lives in Israel’s midst tricking the people into thinking that they were actually from far away (9:7, 16, 22). By means of such subterfuge, they make peace with the Israelites and secure rights to continue dwelling in their midst (10:1). In addition to Rahab and the Gibeonites, others continue to live in Israel’s midst because various tribes failed to drive them out (13:10, 16:10). Finally, in his valediction, Joshua implores Israel to put away the foreign gods that are in their midst (24:23).

The term “midst” is thus used in Joshua in reference to things that are separate from Israel while having an intimate relationship with it – whether deities or proscribed war spoils. When applied to peoples and populations, the term does not suggest that the group has become one with Israel. The statement about Rahab may suggest, then, that she was embraced into Israelite society and given an honored place in Israel’s national memory, even while not becoming a full Israelite. But given that, ideally, the deity dwells in the midst of Israel, the use of the term is likely used here to draw attention to the place of honor Rahab occupies in the nation. This brings to mind Moses’s father-in-law, whose story we treat in Part IV. An outsider too, he should join the nation as a fellow-traveler, serving as its “eyes” and seeking out places where it should camp; the place he is offered is at the head of the camp, with the deity leading the nation through the wilderness (see Num. 10:29–32, 33–36). What makes Rahab special, however, is that she still occupies her privileged place “until the present day.”

The sociological distinction between inclusion and integration proves useful here. If Rahab and her family were included within Israel without being fully integrated, they could be recognized as a group with a protected and privileged status. Such seems to have been the case with the Gibeonites. By means of a formal pact, the Israelites pledge that they will not annihilate this population, and they guarantee its members sanctuary within their society. The book of Samuel presents King Saul violating this oath when he “attempts to wipe out [the Gibeonites] in his zeal for Israel and Judah,” and the bloodguilt incurred by this king eventually results in a famine that Yhwh inflicts upon Israel. Given several points of overlap with the Rahab account, these Gibeonite texts merit a closer examination, which we undertake in Chapter 9.