Three Early Christian Interpreters

Next to Joshua, who was seen as a prefiguration of Jesus, Rahab stands out as one of the leading biblical personalities in the imagination of early Christian interpreters.Footnote ³ The Gospel of Matthew even identifies her as an ancestress of Jesus. A gentile saved from the divine judgment poured out on a pagan city, she embodies central themes in the theology of the early church.

Recently, a number of biblical scholars have ended this long-standing veneration of Rahab. Viewing her now as a collaboratrice who joins forces with colonizers, these scholars consciously adopt the perspective of indigenous peoples – in Palestine, New Zealand, South Africa, North America, and other places. For example, Lori Rowlett compares the biblical account to Disney’s Pocahontas and subjects it to a penetrating postcolonial critique.Footnote ⁴

Rahab’s recent ill repute represents, to be sure, a drastic departure from the high honor that she has enjoyed since the emergence of Christianity. To begin this chapter, we examine several of the earliest Christian texts, showing how they interpret Jewish scriptures in line with a new theological program. I have confined the discussion to these works because they are the earliest ones to refer to this biblical figure, they feature numerous points of contact, and they illustrate the potential of biblical war commemoration for Christian theological construction.Footnote ⁵

First Epistle of Clement

Written to the church at Corinth in the wake of a communal crisis, the First Epistle of Clement is one of the earliest Christian writings and is likely older than a number the New Testament books. The lengthy work refers extensively to the Jewish scriptures as it seeks to demonstrate “how from generation to generation the Master hath given a place of repentance unto them that desire to turn to Him” (7:5).Footnote ⁶ The twelfth chapter rehearses the biblical account of Rahab, quoted here in the elegant translation from 1869 by J. B. Lightfoot:

While Clement’s rendering hews closely to the original story, it departs from it in several telling ways. His larger purpose is to explain why “Rahab the harlot was saved.” The salvation he envisions, however, is far removed from – and a theologically rarefied form of – the survival of Rahab’s clan among the people of Israel in the territory that they conquer. While Clement begins with the biblical story, he interprets the deliverance in the framework of a distinctively Christian soteriology, which we can observe in statu nascendi in the writings of the early church.

Clement begins by declaring that Rahab was saved first by “faith/belief” (pistis). While central to Christian writings, a doctrine of salvific faith, as we will see, is foreign to the account in Joshua – both in its older Hebrew form and in the Greek translations undertaken by Jewish scholars in the Greco-Roman period.Footnote ⁸

But Rahab wasn’t saved by faith alone according to Clement; she had also demonstrated exceptional “love of strangers” (philoxenia). The church father is referring here not to Rahab’s profession but to a set of social expectations relating to the treatment of strangers and guests that sociologists study under the rubric of “hospitality.” Practiced widely throughout ancient Mediterranean societies, hospitality is central to the moral vision of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and an important theme of Clement’s Epistle.Footnote ⁹ When the king of Jericho learns about the spies at Rahab’s home, he sends soldiers to seize and execute them. It’s at this point that “the hospitable Rahab” receives the men and hides them.

The scarlet cord that Rahab displays in her window, in keeping with the spies’ instructions, carries special significance as a prophetic “sign” in Clement’s interpretation. The color signifies “that through the blood of the Lord there shall be redemption unto all them that believe and hope on God.” The reference to “hope” here is noteworthy, as it’s closely related semantically to the Hebrew word for cord (tiqwāh). This clue and others suggest that Clement may have been influenced by early Jewish interpretation, and a number of leading nineteenth-century scholars even thought that he was born Jewish.

Letter to the Hebrews

Alongside Clement, two writings from the New Testament construct memories of Rahab to illustrate the efficacy of faith.Footnote ¹⁰ The eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews includes Rahab in a monumental tribute to prominent figures from the Jewish scriptures who, “by faith” (pistei), demonstrated that “God had provided something better for us” (11:40). The intended audience consists of those who “look to Jesus” as “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (12:2). The author declares that “by faith, Rahab the harlot did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace” (11:31). As in Clement’s letter, faith is tethered to hospitality, even if the term philoxenia doesn’t appear here.

In the preceding verse, we are told that “by faith, the walls of Jericho fell after the people marched around them for seven days.” In keeping with the same line of reasoning, Rahab’s reception of the spies testifies to her faith inasmuch as the destruction of Jericho was still a future event. For faith, according to the proem of the pericope, is “the confidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1).Footnote ¹¹

The author of this account commemorates Rahab’s deeds, along with others from Israel’s past, in an effort to show that, despite appearances, all were actually seeking “a heavenly country” or “city that God has prepared for them.” In this way, the author denationalizes Israel’s heroes and transforms them into prototypes of a new transnational “people of God” (11:25). Like so many others, this early Christian writing reorients the thoroughly political complexion of the Jewish scriptures in the direction of a de-territorialized, de-nationalized, eschatological future. Whereas the book of Joshua depicts a war fought by the people of Israel, whom Rahab joins in solidarity, the book of Hebrews sees in Rahab’s story an anticipation of the impending divine judgment upon the unrighteous. Because of her faith, we are told, she did not perish with “those who were disobedient.” What was once national and political is now universal and ethical.

The Epistle of James

The Epistle of James is a sapiential treatise, written in exquisite Greek, that may have been composed for, and circulated among, “Jewish-Christian” communities in Palestine. One section treats the subject of faith, and it uses the example of Rahab to establish the importance of “works” against those who were apparently claiming that faith is all one needs: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road?” (2:24–25). As with 1 Clement and Hebrews, this early Christian writing emphasizes Rahab’s hospitality (“she welcomed the messengers”).

That the author appeals to the story of Rahab may be because it had already served as an important prooftext in theological debates. Rahab’s profession of Yhwh’s power is one of the lengthiest and most forceful in the Hebrew Bible, as we will see later in this chapter. By drawing on the account, writers in the early church could buttress a soteriology that prioritized belief and confessions of faith. Perhaps responding to the antinomianism inherent in Paul’s theology of faith, the Epistle of James seizes on the account in order to argue, a fortiori, that even it attributes Rahab’s rescue to her “works” rather than her bold and elaborate asseveration.

The author of James proceeds to translate these facts into Christian theological categories: “a person is justified by works rather than faith alone.” Belief or creeds are not enough: “You believe that God is one? Good for you! Even the demons believe in fear and trembling” (2:19). This argument comes remarkably close to Rahab’s declaration that “dread of you has fallen on us, and all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before you, for we have heard how Yhwh dried up the waters of the Sea of Reeds … ” (Josh. 2:9). As I will show, this declaration is not “a confession of faith,” but rather an acknowledgment of indisputable facts, without any redemptive value in and of itself.

Christians as Readers of the Jewish Scriptures

The Jewish scriptures assumed very different meanings, as they were read and interpreted in communities whose social constitution and collective concerns differed in many ways from the communities that produced them. In the case of Rahab, writers in the early church pressed her story into the service of sophisticated debates on soteriology. What gets obfuscated in these debates is the extent to which the account in Joshua relates to membership of the political community of Israel.Footnote ¹²

The Christian writings take for granted that a Canaanite could join the “people of God.” Given the church’s multiethnic constellation, Rahab’s Gentile identity undoubtedly predestined her to a long afterlife in Christian literature.Footnote ¹³ Yet the three interpreters we looked at are not interested in how this figure, as an archetypal alien, secured membership among the people of Israel by demonstrating allegiance to the nation during a momentous war effort. Instead, they use her story to teach ideals of community (such as hospitality) and to address theological matters (such as sin, divine judgment on the disobedient, justification, and eternal salvation) that transcend national boundaries. Something is thus not only lost but also gained in their adaptation: as these thinkers engaged in their own project of peoplehood, a paradigmatic case of war commemoration from the Jewish scriptures proved to be a powerful theological framework for articulating fundamental doctrines and addressing concerns that faced the church as an emerging transnational community of faith.

What I wish to get at in the present study is nothing less than the raison d’être of the Jewish scriptures. According to a leading trajectory of critical scholarship, the Hebrew Bible reflects the emergence of a religious or cultic community of “Yahwists” from the ashes of national defeat. Following Wellhausen, many scholars distinguish between a national existence during the time of the monarchy, on one side, and nonnational religious community living under foreign imperial hegemony, on the other (see the Introduction to the present volume). But this division is severely undermined by the evidence that the battlefield persists in the final strata of the Hebrew Bible (in stark contrast to the New Testament) as a preferred narrative space. Memories of war and martial conflict course through the veins of these writings because they are crafted for a community with a political and territorial orientation.

Although widely viewed, especially by its Christian interpreters, as scripture for an emerging religious sect, the Hebrew Bible has, I maintain, a much more ambitious agenda, serving as the blueprint for a new kind of nationhood. The New Testament authors adopted and adapted this blueprint in keeping with their own interest in creating a spiritual community of faith. To state the difference simply: The Hebrew Bible is a project of creating one nation, while the New Testament is a project of creating a community whose members hail from all nations. Likewise, the Hebrew Bible is about creating an identity that is capable of withstanding national defeat, while the New Testament is about creating an identity capable of withstanding Jesus’s death and delayed return.

The literary corpus we know today as the Hebrew Bible is ultimately a rabbinic project. The Jewish sages from the first centuries of the Common Era were the ones who defined the contours of this corpus by excluding such works as 1 and 2 Maccabees.Footnote ¹⁴ But even if the rabbis had not played a crucial role in the shaping of the Hebrew scriptures, they stand in more direct continuity than the New Testament writers with the scribes who created this corpus. Admittedly, the destruction of the temple marks a traumatic cultural rupture with which rabbinic Judaism had to come to terms in various ways. Yet this rupture pales in comparison with the radical departure from the Hebrew Bible represented by the worship of Christ. For the early church, the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the turning point in history, and the New Testament writings owe their existence in large part to the hermeneutical struggle with the problems, and prospects, presented by this discontinuity with the Jewish scriptures.

Josephus

A good candidate for comparison with early Christian readers is the Antiquities of the Jewish priest, military commander, and historian, Flavius Josephus. His pleonastic retelling of the account, which overlaps on many points with rabbinic interpretations, underscores the political nature of the negotiations between Rahab and the spies.Footnote ¹⁵

Following the lead of the biblical account, Josephus explicitly links Rahab’s honored place in Israel to the memory of her wartime contributions. In a particularly prolix passage (even by Josephus’s standards), Rahab pleads that as soon as the nation conquers the land, the spies remember the danger she had undergone for their sakes. If the king had caught her, he would have executed both her and her family. As a reward for her bravery, she demands that they swear to preserve her and her family’s lives as soon as they have finished conquering Canaan. The spies agree to reward her “not only in words, but in deeds [ergoi].”

The spies instruct Rahab to keep her family and possessions in her house during the battle, and to mark her residence with scarlet threads so that the soldiers could more easily identify it; if she failed to do so, they would be relieved of their obligations. Later, Joshua communicates to the high priest and senate (gerousia) what the spies had sworn to Rahab, and these organs of government in turn officially approve the oath.

Instead of stripping the narrative of its martial materiality and reducing it to an illustration of a timeless theological principle, Josephus preserves its national character. While he shadows the biblical Vorlage, he also accentuates its political features. For example, he highlights the formal-legal qualities of the pact and its quid pro quo rationale.Footnote ¹⁷ In recounting the battle of Jericho, he claims that Joshua formally avowed his gratitude to Rahab, granted her landholdings, “and held her in high esteem ever afterwards.” These details embellish the biblical depiction and anticipate later rabbinic legends discussed in the following section. The conferral of property rights is, nevertheless, consonant with the biblical authors’ concern to show how, after the conquest, Joshua equitably distributed the land among all members of the nation, and what warrants the embellishment is the statement in the biblical account that Rahab “has continued to dwell in the midst of Israel until this day” (Josh. 6:25).

Josephus’s rendering of Rahab’s eloquent utterance about Israel’s god is especially telling. The historian has reduced a speech, which encompasses three long verses in the biblical account, to a brief line that explains Rahab’s confidence in Israel’s victory: “ … for she knew all [what would happen] because she had been instructed by signs [sēmeiois] of God.” Reminiscent of the claims in later Christian and Jewish literature that Rahab possessed the gift of prophecy, this little statement in Josephus’s retelling has fully replaced Rahab’s eloquent declaration in the biblical text, with its climatic peroration: “For Yhwh your god, he is god in the heavens above and on the earth below!” (Josh. 2:11).

The fact that Josephus downplays the significance of Rahab’s pronouncements about Israel’s god, and empties them of any independent merit, is undoubtedly related to the great space he devotes to depicting how this woman risked her life, and that of her entire family, by hiding the spies. What justifies the honored place she and her family enjoy in Israel’s national territory and its collective history are not her words but rather her works.Footnote ¹⁸

Rahab and the Rabbis

Rabbinic interpretation elicits sympathy for Rahab by maintaining that she had been forced into a life of sex trafficking as a child. The proof for this surprising claim is that she had heard the news about the Egyptians’ demise, which happened forty years earlier. At that time, they surmise, she must have been at least ten years of age, and now at fifty, she was still working as a prostitute. She owed her enduring career to her extraordinary beauty. (The rabbis counted her among the four most beautiful women who ever lived, the others being the matriarch Sarah, David’s wife Abigail, and Queen Esther.) Rahab’s beauty was so legendary that simply repeating her name twice would immediately bring sexual release.Footnote ¹⁹ The spies seek her out because her fame had spread far and wide. Since every minister and prince visited her, she was better informed than anyone else. Yet Yhwh’s fame had also spread throughout the land and, despite her extraordinary beauty, the men of the land had lost their virility along with their courage upon hearing of his extraordinary might.Footnote ²⁰

The rabbis regarded Rahab’s utterance as the consummate affirmation of the power of Israel’s god by a Gentile, outdoing any other across the entire span of sacred scripture. Because she acknowledges the presence of their deity both in heaven and on the earth, they deemed Rahab’s statement to be even more radical than the profession by the Aramean general Naaman in the book of Kings: “Now I know that there is no god in all the earth except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15).

Few contemporary biblical scholars would agree with the ancient sages on this point, and rightly so: the words of Naaman constitute one of the most sweeping monotheistic statements in the entire Bible, going far beyond Rahab’s monolatrous avowal. Yet the rabbis gave pride of place to Rahab instead of Naaman, and their reason for doing so was that this foreign general, while revering their god, was not interested in becoming a member of their people. The biblical account portrays him importing soil from Eretz Israel and placing it under the altar he builds to Yhwh. This religious reverence, even if it is exclusive to Israel’s god, sufficed neither for the biblical writers nor the rabbis. One needed to make a resolute and unswerving commitment to throw his or her lot in with the people of Israel.Footnote ²¹ Such is what Rahab does. By hiding the spies, she risks her life and physically demonstrated her allegiance to this nation. Moreover, she performs this action at an uncertain time, when the Israelites had yet to win a battle against Canaan’s superior forces and superbly fortified cities.

The rabbis interpreted the concluding statement – “she has continued to dwell in the midst of Israel until this day” (Josh. 6:25) – to mean that she converted and became a “righteous proselyte” (gēr ṣedeq), with most, if not all, the rights and obligations of Jews by birth.Footnote ²² Rahab is not mentioned elsewhere in scripture, yet the Jewish sages used midrash to mine the biblical genealogies for traces of her descendants. In the process, they “discovered” that she is the ancestress of Israelite priests and prophets (including Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Huldah), and that she even became Joshua’s wife.Footnote ²³ In this way, they eliminated any doubt that the people of Israel fully embraced her in their fold.

Conversion and Naturalization

Whereas Rahab’s identity as a Gentile gave her an advantage in Christian sources, it was naturally a problem for Jewish interpreters. Membership of Israel was decided primarily by descent. Although this criterion may seem chauvinistic, what gave rise to it was not racial prejudice but rather the perception that intermarriage severely undermined the effort to create a form of peoplehood that could survive the loss of statehood. As long as one could take for granted the persistence of a powerful territorial state, intermarriage would not pose much of a problem and actually might benefit political alliances. But after imperial armies erased the nation’s territorial borders, one had to do something to be a Jew. Enculturation of the nation’s members in Israel’s collective memories – which fostered the formation of the biblical corpus – now assumed an unprecedented role in identity formation. And given the role of parents in enculturation and education, matters surrounding marriage took on a new importance.

Tackling the problem of intermarriage, the postexilic Judean leader Nehemiah observed that the children of these mixed unions no longer “knew how to speak Judean/Jewish” (Neh. 13:24). As an antidote to this problem of “cultural literacy,” Jewish communities enacted strict measures against intermarriage.Footnote ²⁴ In Greco-Roman times, Jewish identity came to be defined legally by birth, and later specifically birth from a Jewish woman (i.e., matrilineal descent). All these developments were ultimately elicited and sustained by a realization that procreation and education were the most reliable means of fostering the growth of the Jewish people.

But what about non-Jews who desire to enter the national fold? The rabbis responded to this question by creating a ritual for conversion, and when they did, they studied the lives of such biblical figures as Jethro, Ruth, and Rahab.Footnote ²⁵ Of course, the biblical accounts do not depict these figures converting to a religion such as “Yahwism.”Footnote ²⁶ When the ancient sages spoke of conversion, they did not mean an assent of faith or confession of belief followed by baptism, as in Christianity. True, they stipulated that the convert has to testify with a verbal declaration and be immersed in water, but the procedure as a whole is more reminiscent of what we today call “naturalization” – the process by which one becomes a member of a political community.Footnote ²⁷

The declaration that the Jewish convert makes is much more akin to the oaths of loyalty pronounced by citizens of nation-states than to the creeds cited by members of transnational communities of faith, whether it be the Christian church or the Muslim ummah. The convert, like the naturalized citizen, takes upon him- or herself the obligation to abide fully by a code of laws. It also became customary by the first century CE to require male converts to undergo circumcision. This fleshly ritual expresses the principle that one becomes a member of the people in a physical sense, in keeping with Israel’s character as primarily a political, not cultic, community.

The discontinuity between the biblical accounts of outsiders joining Israel, on the one hand, and the rabbis’ approach to conversion, on the other, pivots on the issue of land and location. Rahab, Jethro, and Ruth not only utter unambiguous statements about Israel’s god but also, and more decisively, join themselves to the people of Israel in their national territory. Remember that Naaman, in contrast to these respectable figures, stays in his country and builds there an altar to Yhwh on soil imported from the land of Israel.

Rabbinic Judaism charts a new course. Living in an age when the Jewish people no longer enjoyed political sovereignty, and when many of its members had been exiled from their homeland, the rabbis sought a means to establish belonging in their communities without requiring residence in the territories that the nation had long inhabited. By omitting the criterion of territorial residence, the sages did not mean to dismiss the importance of place in the construction of Jewish identity. Indeed, their prayers and hopes remained resolutely fixed on a return to Zion. But in the meantime, they adopted and expanded a core tenet of biblical nationhood: the possibility of being a people even when many of the communities constituting this people did not inhabit, let alone exercise sovereignty over, its national homeland.

For these reasons, Ruth’s statement, not Rahab’s, came to be recognized as the quintessential expression of the Jewish convert. Naomi repeatedly exhorts Ruth and her sister to go back to their people and gods in Moab. But whereas her sister takes leave of Naomi, Ruth “cleaves” to her and utters the declaration of allegiance that we already considered in Chapter 6:

Ruth’s declaration expresses her determination to make Naomi’s people and god her own, and to follow her wherever she goes. Naomi’s wanderings lead the two back to the land of Judah, but because the declaration leaves the destination open, it lent itself easily to the project of peoplehood that the rabbis inherited from their biblical predecessors and modified for the Jewish diaspora.

The Repentant Rahab

In contrast to Ruth, Rahab served as an illustration of the power of repentance for the rabbis. According to their expositions, she belonged to a people about whom it was written, “You shall not save even one soul alive” (Deut. 20:16), but because she “brought herself near,” the deity also “brought her near.” If an exception was made in the case of this Canaanite, “how much more will the Holy One be receptive to Israel, his beloved people, when they act in accordance with his will?”Footnote ²⁸

Although Rahab’s occupation as a harlot likely wouldn’t have been a cause for consternation among the earliest biblical readers, it began to elicit opprobrium in a culture that had been shaped by the spread of Hellenism. The rabbis were confident that Rahab relinquished her life of harlotry once she became a member of Israel, even if this life was what had brought her to Israel in the first place. She knew that the tidings of Israel’s victories had zapped the Canaanites’ strength because she had personally witnessed the shriveling effect of Israel’s triumphs on their manhood.Footnote ²⁹ After forty years of prostitution, she not only repented but also demonstrated her solidarity with Israel by hiding the spies. As a reward for her deeds, she was welcomed among the people of Israel and went on to become, as noted, the ancestress of many of the most important figures in the nation’s history.

Whereas prostitution is never proscribed in biblical law, later generations, from the Greco-Roman period and thereafter, condemned this profession, suggesting that she was nothing other than an innkeeper or the proprietress of a tavern.Footnote ³⁰ However, in the ancient Near East, as in the American Old West, taverns and inns were establishments in which men not only could find a meal and bed but also form political alliances and engage in sexual activity.Footnote ³¹ In reporting that the men went to the house/inn of a prostitute and “slept there,” the narrator leaves it open whether the men had intercourse with Rahab. The authors of the account, who were neither prude nor prurient, may simply not have been interested in the question: the spies enter the house of a prostitute because it promises to be a place where news circulates, and they are interested in learning about the psychological condition of the land’s inhabitants, not the physical condition of its fortifications.Footnote ³²

Alternatively, the authors of the account may have intended to cast Israelite men in an unfavorable light. According to this option, the story lampoons the spies by presenting them as less honorable than Rahab: upon arriving in Jericho, the men head immediately to a house of pleasure, yet its proprietress turns out to have only one thing on her mind – the power of Israel’s god and the impending invasion of Canaan.Footnote ³³

Josephus notably avoids the use of “harlot” when describing Rahab. (He has the spies less interested in the enemy’s psychological condition than in inspecting the ramparts and fortifications; when the sun goes down, they repair to “a certain inn” to find refuge for the night.) While prostitution was widely accepted in the Greco-Roman world, prostitutes themselves were forbidden to marry and were banned from public ceremonies.Footnote ³⁴ However, there’s likely another reason why Josephus omits her title: if Rahab is not a harlot, she cannot serve as an illustration of a repentant convert, and this serves Josephus’s interest in filtrating out many of theological elements in the account. Writing for non-Jewish audiences, the historian eliminated Rahab’s declaration about Yhwh’s superior power and, in so doing, made it more palatable for his Roman readers.

The rabbis, however, refused to pick and choose from a text whose sacred meanings, they were convinced, could only be discovered by taking seriously all the facts of scripture. Instead of tossing aside details that bothered them, they found a way to connect Rahab’s occupation as a prostitute to the unequivocal words she speaks and the commendable deeds she performs.Footnote ³⁵

From Rahab to Paul

The prototypical convert in Christianity is the Apostle Paul – an individual who had made a name for himself by violently persecuting Christian communities before he was “blinded by the light” on the road to Damascus. After turning his life around, he quickly ascends to a position of authority in the early church (see Gal. 1:13–14). Later Christian tradition, beginning with the book of Acts, embellished accounts of this persecution; the aim was, not least, to demonstrate that even an archenemy of the church, with blood on his hands, could not only be forgiven but also rise to the highest ranks of leadership.

It’s inconceivable that the United States or any other national community would grant citizenship – let alone a public office – to one who had a history of terrorizing them. In the same way, it makes sense that the scribes who produced the Jewish scriptures, and their rabbinic successors, cast aspersions on Naaman (a foreign general with a record of assaulting Israel) when articulating norms for integrating outsiders into their national fold.Footnote ³⁶

Paul the persecutor is the polar opposite of Rahab the prostitute. Their stories are archetypal, each for a new kind of community: the former for the transnational community of the church, and the latter for the national community of Israel. Faith is the means by which one enters the former, while acts of solidarity and allegiance are the test of membership for the latter. This difference explains why Rahab, in contrast to Paul and Naaman, doesn’t rue a record of violence against the people she later joins. She demonstrates exceptional hospitality from the very beginning. And when she’s granted an honored place in the nation’s midst, the reason is not because she recognizes the power of Israel’s god; after all, the inhabitants of Canaan do the same, as she divulges to the spies. A special place of honor is awarded to her rather because she risks her life and the lives of her family for the nation, and then follows through with legal actions to secure special protection.

I do not want to deny the central place that faith occupies both in this story and in the wider national narrative. When Abraham and Sarah – and later the nation after the exodus – embark on a journey to the land of promise, they act in confidence that Yhwh will meet his end of the bargain. What’s determinative is action, yet this action is not mere obedience; it’s impelled by confidence (Gen. 15:6) that the other party 1) will be “faithful” in keeping the promise or pact (Deut. 7:9) and 2) has the capacity to do what’s required. Since Rahab is an outsider to the covenant, these two sides are bifurcated: when she hangs the scarlet cord in her window, she trusts that Israel will keep the pact that she has made with the spies, just as she is confident that Yhwh has what it takes to conquer Canaan.

This chapter has demonstrated the ways in which war commemoration, as a political activity, evolved for theological purposes in formative Judaism and Christianity. In Chapter 8, we turn our attention to the biblical account interpreted by these early readers. Our aim will be to understand the evolution of the Rahab story and the various functions it serves in the biblical narrative.

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.

Archeological and Biblical Evidence

At the site of Gibeon (Tell el-Jib), archeologists have unearthed more than ninety jar handles bearing the Hebrew impression LMLK (meaning for the king) and dating to the late eighth to mid-seventh centuries; most are identified as “late types.” Another twenty-four were found at Beeroth (Khirbet el-Burj). Several of the handles from Gibeon were originally part of massive wine pithoi. Recently, a tax bulla that reads “For the king, from Gibeon,” dating perhaps to the reign of Manasseh (697–643 BCE), was uncovered in Jerusalem. In addition to these finds, forty-one jar handles with concentric stamps (mid-seventh century; 14.5 percent of all those excavated) were found at Gibeon, with fifty-six jar handles bearing the name Gibeon.Footnote ⁴

More than a century before native potters impressed Judean royal seals on these jar handles, an Egyptian scribe had inscribed the name Gibeon in a memorial account of the cities encountered by the Egyptian pharaoh Sheshonq during his campaign in the southern Levantine (ca. 926/5 BCE). The site of Tell el-Jib was occupied from the Early Bronze Age, but attained unprecedented levels of prosperity during Iron Age IIB and IIC (corresponding roughly to the eighth and seventh centuries, respectively). A thick wall enclosed the crest of the High Place, and a large pool with water conduits witnesses to impressive architectural expertise. In addition, the city boasted a thriving wine industry during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, with cellars that could house 95,000 liters of wine.Footnote ⁵

On the biblical landscape, the Gibeonites inhabited a tetrapolis consisting of the towns of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-Jearim (see Josh. 9:17). The towns of Chephirah and Beeroth are mentioned very rarely in biblical literature. A list from the Persian-Hellenistic period mentions them together with Kiriath-Jearim as several of the places to which Judean exiles returned (Ezra 2:25; Neh. 7:29). Beeroth gets bad press in a passage from the book of Samuel that describes how two men from this town entered the house of Saul’s son, Ish-bosheth, and brutally murdered him in the night; when David hears about it, he condemns their deed and commands his servants to execute them (2 Sam. 4).Footnote ⁶

Kiriath-Jearim is remembered as the place where the ark of Yhwh was domiciled for some twenty years, and recent excavations conducted by Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Römer have revealed a massive cultic platform at this site. When David centralizes his kingdom, he transfers the palladium to Jerusalem from “the house of Abinadab on the hill” (2 Sam. 6:1–5, 14–15, 16–19). Whereas the text locates this hill in a town called Baale-Judah, another account (1 Sam. 4–7) goes to great lengths to identify Abinadab’s house in Kiriath-Jearim and to explain how the ark ended up there: After the Philistines capture it in battle, it wreaks havoc among them, so they send it back to Judah. When it arrives in the town of Beth-Shemesh, it continues to inflict many deaths. Wondering who could “stand/serve before Yhwh, this holy god,” the people of the town petition their neighbors in Kiriath-Jearim to take it off their hands. When the citizens of Kiriath-Jearim do so, they station it in “the house of Abinadab on the hill” and consecrate his son to guard it.Footnote ⁷ It remains in the town happily for twenty years (1 Sam. 7:1–2).Footnote ⁸ The claims made in this account of the ark – perhaps representing an older source – would, of course, have pleased the (Gibeonite) inhabitants of Kiriath-Jearim.Footnote ⁹

With respect to Gibeon, “a massive city, like one of the royal cities” (Josh. 10:2), the biblical texts reflect a range of attitudes. A document in the Nehemiah Memoir commemorates a Gibeonite contribution to the construction of Jerusalem’s wall (Neh. 3:7). The book of Chronicles identifies Gibeon as the place where the tabernacle had been erected (1 Chron. 16:39, 21:29, and passim). The book also describes a warrior from Gibeon leaving Saul and becoming one of David’s elite warriors (1 Chron. 12:4). Two passages link “the father/founder of Gibeon” to the line of Saul (1 Chron. 8:29–40, 9:35–44); the Gibeonites accordingly belong to Saul’s extended clan. This is not a good thing, since, in the version of history told in Chronicles, Saul serves as a contemptible foil to the heroic David.Footnote ¹⁰

Older texts present a similarly ambivalent image of Gibeon. A chapter in the book of Samuel depicts a bloody battle fought “at the pool of Gibeon” between the warriors of David and Saul after the death of the latter (2 Sam. 2; see also 2 Sam. 20:8). The book of Jeremiah alludes to this battle by locating another deplorable instance of internecine conflict “at the waters of Gibeon” (Jer. 41:12; cf. v. 9). The same book (chap. 28) depicts a Gibeonite prophet named Hananiah, who, as a prominent figure in Jerusalemite society, enjoys the respect of elite (priestly) circles. However, he denies the veracity of Jeremiah’s message; consequently, Yhwh sends Jeremiah to curse him, and he dies soon thereafter. The rabbis interpreted this prophet’s Gibeonite origins in line with Joshua’s curse (see Josh. 9:23).

Relationship to Jerusalem’s Temple

A number of biblical texts bespeak Gibeon’s importance as a cultic place, with a long history of royal patronage. We’ve already considered the ark narrative, which commemorates the respected role played by Kiriath-Jearim. The book of Kings honors Solomon as the one who built the temple in Jerusalem, but it also claims that long before he undertook the building project, he went regularly to Gibeon to sacrifice: “For that was the principal shrine; Solomon had offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar” (1 Kings 3:4).Footnote ¹¹

Another prominent text reflecting Gibeon’s cultic significance is 2 Samuel 21, which we examine in greater detail later in this chapter. The story describes a famine and David’s attempts to placate Yhwh. When the drought had not relented for three years, the king learns, in an oracle from Yhwh, that the cause was “Saul and his house, because he had incurred bloodguilt by killing Gibeonites.” We are not told when Saul committed the atrocities, but one is reminded of the time when he slaughtered the priests at Nob (1 Sam. 21–22).Footnote ¹² David asks the Gibeonites what he could do for them so that they would “bless the possession of Yhwh.” Although this expression may be just a way of describing reconciliation between the Gibeonites and (the rest of) Israel, it may refer to a special priestly prerogative to pronounce a benediction on the people. (The collective blessing of Israel is to be pronounced by the sons of Aaron, according to Numbers 6.) In response to David’s inquiry, the Gibeonites ask that they be given seven of Saul’s sons, whom they intended to impale “on the mountain before Yhwh,” and, with David’s assistance, this is exactly what they do. The cultic-ritual character of the slaughter is underscored by the statement that it occurred for the entire span of the barley harvest.

The Gibeonites’ cultic connection is reflected elsewhere in the biblical corpus. Thus, the book of Isaiah (28:21) compares Yhwh’s might to the hill of Perazim (see 2 Sam. 6:8) and to the valley of Gibeon. Likewise, material from Joshua, also treated later in this chapter, assigns to the Gibeonites tasks at “the house of my god” and “the altar of Yhwh, in the sacred place that he would choose” (Josh. 9:24, 27). Although menial tasks, the responsibility is nevertheless cultic, and as we shall see, there’s a very good reason why the authors would have wanted to diminish the nature of their priestly roles. Moreover, the following account of the battle at Gibeon, which is generally agreed to be older, presents Yhwh engaging directly in combat by both hurling stones from heaven and stopping the sun in the sky; the latter aspect reflects the “solarization” of Yhwh, whose wars are commemorated in “the Scroll of Yashar” (Josh. 10:11–14).Footnote ¹³

All these texts assert a special relationship between Yhwh and the Gibeonites. They claim that Yhwh’s ark resided in Kiriath-Jearim for many years; that Solomon sacrificed frequently to Yhwh at Gibeon and had one of his most important divine encounters there; that the Gibeonites appeased the divine wrath at harvest time by slaughtering Saul’s son on the “mountain of Yhwh”; and that Yhwh manifested his power at Gibeon in special ways.

On the basis of the material just discussed, one would assume that the Gibeonites were members of Israel. However, two texts in our survey emphatically deny that such is the case. The first appears in the account of David and the ritual slaughter Saul’s descendants; the second is the tale of the Gibeonites’ first encounter with Israel during the days of Joshua. In what follows, we treat these two closely related texts in tandem.

From Joshua to Saul

The account of David permitting the Gibeonites to perform a ritual slaughter of Saul’s male progeny (2 Sam. 21) begins with a statement about the origins of this population. As most scholars agree, the statement must have originated as a marginal gloss before being incorporated into the introduction. Notice how it’s interjected into the narrative; in most modern translations, it is placed in parentheses:

The supplement declares, in the most straightforward terms, that the Gibeonites are Amorites, not Israelites. They lived among the Israelites because the latter had entered a pact with them. However, Saul had violated the pact and sought to wipe out this indigenous population. What motivated his genocidal campaign, the supplement explains, was his xenophobic zeal for his own people. It’s noteworthy that Saul, as a Benjaminite from the town of Gibeah, hails from a region that was home to the important Gibeonite sites mentioned earlier in this chapter.Footnote ¹⁴

The account of Saul’s reign in the book of Samuel pivots on an episode in which Yhwh’s prophet commands him to annihilate the vicious Amalekites, both the people and their animals, because they treated Israel most inhospitably at the time of the exodus.Footnote ¹⁵ Saul, however, defies these battle orders by granting immunity to the Amalekites’ king and destroying only the worthless livestock (1 Sam. 15). Consequently, he forfeits his throne to David, who is busy fighting Amalekites when Saul and Jonathan fall dishonorably in a battle with the Philistines on Mount Gilboa (2 Sam. 1:1).

While Saul fails in his campaigns against these and other enemies of Israel, he easily executes eighty-five priests of Yhwh from the town of Nob/Gob, together with all the inhabitants and animals that live there (1 Sam. 21–22); the connections between this town and the Gibeonites have long been noted.Footnote ¹⁶ With respect to that pact mentioned in 2 Samuel 22:2, the book of Joshua tells how Israel swore to the Gibeonites that they would permit them to live in their midst (chap. 9). In the context of the wider narrative of Genesis-Kings, the reader should understand the statement “the Israelites had sworn to them [protection]” as a reference to this episode in the book of Joshua.Footnote ¹⁷

The Gibeonites are depicted in chapter 9 as a population that joins the nation later. Since neither they nor their ancestors were present at Sinai, they are not members of the covenant and, as in the case of Rahab, have to be grafted in by a secondary pact of protection made directly, and deceitfully, with the nation (rather than with Yhwh). In the case of the Gibeonites, however, the pact fails to provide protection after the nation’s first king seizes power. When Saul embarks on his nationalistic program of genocide, the people fail to stand in his way and enforce the pact of protection made directly with them. Even if that pact was made under false pretenses, it was sworn in the name of Yhwh, and Yhwh is not reluctant to enforce it. He chooses to do so by punishing the land with a famine.

An Early Memory of Joshua

It seems quite likely that this episode in Joshua 9 was composed secondarily as a prologue to the battle story in the following chapter.Footnote ¹⁸ In fact, the battle story may be one of the oldest texts within the book, and the event itself appears to have been commemorated in an earlier work featuring the wars of Yhwh (see “the Scroll of Yashar” in 10:11). Most of the material in Joshua appears to have been created ad hoc for the exodus-conquest narrative, yet the battle story, when isolated and read independently from its present context, identifies Joshua neither as Moses’s successor nor as the commanding officer who leads Israel across the Jordan. Like Gideon, Jephthah, Saul, and David, the hero is a local warlord who commands his own private army. He saves a beleaguered population thanks to the miraculous intervention of Yhwh; the name Joshua, after all, means “Yhwh saved/saves.”

The story’s substratum depicts a scenario that is strikingly similar to Saul’s rescue of Jabesh-Gilead as portrayed in 1 Samuel 11. In both cases, an enemy first besieges a town; in response, its residents send a message for help; and finally, the hero answers the call and marches up promptly with an army to “save” them. The difference between the accounts is that Saul musters a militia force from Israel’s farmers, while Joshua fights with what seem to be his private corps of professional warriors. In keeping with a typical scenario of martial “saviors” in the ancient world, Joshua just happens to conquer a region as he lends a hand to those in dire straits.Footnote ¹⁹ By executing five kings who had formed a military coalition against Gibeon, he then extends his territorial claims from their original borders in the central hill country.

The older battle story in chapter 10 does not present a sharp distinction between Israelites and all others (“Canaanites”); in fact, the name “Israel” is found solely in what appears to be a secondary stratum. In contrast, the account of the pact in chapter 9 clearly identifies the Gibeonites as non-Israelites. Specifically, it calls them “Hivites,” linking them to the “seven nations” that Yhwh commands Israel to exterminate in Deuteronomy. If they survived the conquest, it was only through a contemptible act of deceit.Footnote ²⁰

The battle story also presents the Gibeonites in a positive (or at least neutral) light. The city of Gibeon is described as “a massive city, like one of the royal cities, … and all its men were heroes/warriors” (v. 2).Footnote ²¹ Its extraordinary might is suggested further by the large coalition of Canaanite kings that besieges it. In contradistinction to chapter 10, the new account in chapter 9 portrays the Gibeonites as cowardly and duplicitous. When they hear what Joshua did to Jericho and Ai, they devise a scheme to save themselves: Disguised as travelers from a distant country, they send delegates to make a treaty with Israel. They know that Joshua is intent on taking possession of a clearly circumscribed territory and would not target them as enemies if he thinks they come from abroad. Reflecting this rationale, the laws of Deuteronomy demand the annihilation of all who dwell in Canaan, yet permit peace treaties with those who reside afar off (Deut. 20:10–18).Footnote ²²

After Joshua makes a pact with the Gibeonites, their true identity comes to light: Instead of voyaging from a foreign land, they turn out to be a Canaanite population residing in Israel’s “midst.” When summoned to give account for their actions, the Gibeonites explain that they feared for their lives since they knew Yhwh had commanded Israel to destroy all the inhabitants of the land. Rather than violating their treaty and assaulting the Gibeonites, as Saul does, Joshua allows them to live in the nation’s midst. But to ensure that they will not occupy a place of honor, he pronounces a curse on them: “Never shall one of you be ‘cut off’ from being a slave – hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my god!” (v. 23).

The Composition of Joshua 9

The account of the pact in Joshua 9 denigrates the Gibeonites and denies them a primordial connection to the people of Israel. Whereas the true Israelites came out of Egypt during the exodus under Moses, these are indigenous inhabitants of Canaan who managed to weasel their way into the national fold when Israel was already in the land. The account also explains how the Gibeonites came to serve in a cultic capacity: instead of assigning them to an illustrious position at one of the largest shrines in the region (1 Kings 3:4) or to a special role as guardians of the ark of Yhwh (1 Sam. 7 and 2 Sam. 6), Joshua formally condemned them, during their first encounter with Israel, to the most menial of cultic tasks (see Deut. 29:10).

If the Gibeonites were allowed to perform respected priestly roles at an important shrine, the recognition they would enjoy would incite fierce competition with priests in Jerusalem. The latter have left their unmistakable imprimatur on Joshua 9. As we observed in relation to Joshua 22 in Part II, they take the opportunity here to reaffirm to their readers that there was only one place that Yhwh chose for his altar.

Below I present the results of my diachronic analysis of the text. The indented portions belong to the secondary strata, while the earliest edition is in boldface.Footnote ²³

As a late text placed at an early point in the biblical narrative, Joshua 9 provides a lens through which to read all the subsequent depictions of the Gibeonites. Moreover, it invites the reader to infer that if the Gibeonites had no cultic role before they were assigned to lowly tasks at the altar of Yhwh, then they must have built their renowned shrine and achieved their prominent priestly status after they abandoned their assignments at Yhwh’s one true altar.Footnote ²⁴ When read in sequence, this late text contradicts many others related to the Gibeonites. (For example, it would not make sense for Yhwh to appear to Solomon at Gibeon if its shrine were illicit.) But such is the nature of biblical literature: Instead of deleting problematic texts, redactors more frequently added new texts in an effort to tip the weight of evidence in their favor. And what better place to attack the Gibeonites than right before Israel’s first encounter with them during the conquest?

From Saul to David

Having now explored the compositional history of the Joshua 9–10, we can return to our discussion of 2 Samuel 21. We’ve seen that Joshua does not break his oath after learning that the Gibeonites deceived him. In contrast, Saul goes out of his way to harass the Gibeonites. By doing so, he flouts the protection Joshua originally promised them. It is up to David, as Saul’s successor, to make reparations.Footnote ²⁵

An ancient oath provides little protection unless it is guaranteed by effective divine curses. Fortunately, the Gibeonites have a special relationship to Yhwh, and the oath eventually makes itself felt in the form of an enduring famine. After three years of dismal harvests, David finally turns to an oracle to learn what caused it. When he discovers, conveniently, that not he but his predecessor Saul was at fault, he summons the Gibeonite leaders to determine how he could make atonement so that they would “bless the heritage of Yhwh.” The Gibeonites are initially reluctant to request anything, but, with David’s prodding, they eventually ask that seven of Saul’s male descendants be impaled on a hill at his hometown in Gibeah. David accedes to their request, and the ritual execution is performed “on the mountain before Yhwh” during the first days of the harvest. The act appeases the deity, and the famine ceases thereafter.

This is a highly disturbing episode, and it is placed next to others that are unfavorable to David’s memory. Directly preceding it are the accounts of the bloody war that the king wages against Israel, his calamitous return from exile, and an insurrection against his reign. In the immediately following account, David grows weary while fighting the Philistines and is almost killed; his men thereafter swear that he will no longer accompany them in battle. Another passage tells of a census David undertakes that provokes divine judgment on the nation; it ceases only after David builds an altar and sacrifices to Yhwh, who is said to have “heeded the land” (2 Sam. 24:25) – the same expression with which the episode in chapter 21 concludes.

In the context of these critical accounts, our story is to be interpreted not ad maiorem David gloriam but as a conscious attempt to cast the nation’s iconic ruler in an unfavorable light. As such, it’s part of the larger parable of power and statehood unfurled in the book of Samuel.Footnote ²⁸ David originally mounts the throne because he’s skilled in fending off the nation’s enemies, but at this late stage he has become a menace to his own people.

Rizpah’s Heroism

The critique of David continues in the expansions to the account, which appear to have been undertaken in two stages. The first is one of the most poignant scenes in the Hebrew Bible, portraying a heroic act of protest. The protagonist is Rizpah, the mother of two of the seven victims. For many weeks, she camps in sackcloth on a nearby boulder, shielding the impaled bodies from birds during the day and from animals at night:

This description of Rizpah’s vigil may have been added to the story first. If so, it would have dramatically shifted the interpretation of the final line: “The deity heeded the land after this.” Originally “after this” referred to the ritual slaughter on the mountain of Yhwh, yet with the new scene we are to understand that what appeased the divine ire was a very different move – namely, an act of honoring the victims performed by a bereaved mother who seemingly could not do otherwise.

The second part of the continuation originally had nothing to do with this story, yet it makes for a suggestive and powerful resolution to the bloody drama. The text consists of a short account of how David honors the memories of Saul and Jonathan by reinterring their bones in their ancestral tomb (vv. 12–14). To connect it to the story, a scribe added two lines: one that presents David learning of Rizpah’s actions (v. 11) and another (v. 13) that presents David gathering the bones of those who had been “impaled” – the same verb as used in the description of the Gibeonites “impaling” the bodies of Saul’s descendants.Footnote ²⁹

The episode works as a continuation of the older account in two ways. First, its description of David reinterring Saul’s and Jonathan’s bones on their patrimony makes for a fitting response to Rizpah’s protest over the exposed corpses of these men’s descendants. Second, it presents the Philistines “hanging” the bodies of Saul and Jonathan at the public square in Beth-Shan, which parallels the Gibeonites “impaling” their descendants.Footnote ³⁰

The new continuations thus turn the originally pro-Gibeonite account on its head. Together with the interpolation in verse 2b, which we discussed at length earlier in this chapter, these supplements make it clear that the Gibeonites do not belong to the people of Israel. They are outsiders and behave like the Philistines, Israel’s most loathsome neighbors. The necessary step David takes to bring an end to the famine is not what he does to placate the Gibeonites but rather the benefaction he performs for the house of Saul. From the perspective of the account’s three compositional stages, the deity heeds the land not in response to the Gibeonites’ ritual slaughter or even the courageous act of Rizpah to honor the dead; what ultimately induces divine favor is rather the honor David pays to the memory of Saul and his son Jonathan. In keeping with the critique of monarchic power being formulated in the wider context, these new expanded versions of the story leave no room for doubt that had it not been for Rizpah’s courageous and unrelenting protest, David wouldn’t have thought to perform this praiseworthy deed.Footnote ³¹

The Gibeonites, Rahab, and Biblical War Commemoration

Let us now consider how our findings relate to the Rahab story. Both the Gibeonites and Rahab are depicted in the book of Joshua as indigenous outsiders who secure a place “in the midst of Israel.” The accounts of both also revolve around the formal declarations they make as they enter the national fold. The Gibeonite delegates begin their address in a manner that bears striking resemblances to Rahab’s speech:

Rahab also tells the spies how she heard about the feats of Yhwh against these two formidable foes that inhabited the Transjordan. Yet she not only speaks; she also acts, and does so fearlessly. By risking her life, she merits the special treatment and protection she and her family receive during the Israelite invasion. Conversely, when all the kings of Canaan assemble to fight Israel (9:1–2), the lily-livered Gibeonites do not rally to Israel’s side; their only move is an elaborate act of deception, through which they manage to save themselves.

Such tricksterism is admittedly in keeping with the Israelite ethos of survival depicted in many biblical texts.Footnote ³² Yet in the case of outsiders (such as Rahab and the Gibeonites), the objective is not simply to secure a place in the national community, but to do so honorably. Only then can a group expect to be embraced fully, rather than merely tolerated. In this respect, the Gibeonites fall far short of the high standard Rahab set through both her words and actions.

The authors of Joshua radically recontextualized one of the oldest accounts in the book – the story of how an indigenous military leader saved Gibeon and thereby established Israel’s hegemony in the region (chap. 10). By prefacing this account with the story of the Gibeonites’ subterfuge (chap. 9), they transformed the group to indigenous aliens with no primordial connection to the people of Israel. From other biblical texts and archeological evidence, we know that the Gibeonites boasted an honored position as guardians of a prominent shrine. Vilifying their cultic competitors, the Jerusalem-temple circles that composed Joshua 9 tell how Israel’s leader, during the foundational wars of conquest, punished the denizens of Gibeon for their shameless chicanery and consigned them to the lowest orders of service in the congregation of Israel and at Yhwh’s altar. Thus, in this case, we see how rivalries between clans and cultic professionals provided the impetus for the war commemoration that produced these central texts in the book of Joshua.

The Rahab story is directly related to this literary activity. The biblical scribes used biography and the stories of particular individuals when engaging in war commemoration on behalf of corporate groups and institutions. Yet whereas a figure like Jael, whom we study in Part IV, represents a particular ethnic group (the Kenites), Rahab serves as a foil to the Gibeonites. The authors castigate a prominent group in their society by producing a powerful tale of an outsider; in the process, the outsider becomes an insider while the Gibeonites, who had long been honored members of Israel, are declared to be aliens.

But the Rahab story is not just about Gibeonites. As the archetypal Other, this woman looms across the horizon of the entire biblical corpus, illustrating the most fundamental strategy by which disputed groups could affirm their affiliation to the people of Israel.

In addition to depicting this strategy, the biblical scribes themselves model a means of negotiating belonging. Instead of actual wartime contributions and solidarity, this method is historiographical in nature. It consists of memory-making through the activity of writing and rewriting texts. For these scribes, the account of the greatest moment in Israel’s history – when the nation took possession of its Promised Land – offered itself as an ideal framework in which to commemorate the solidarity and sacrifice of some, and the duplicity and deceptions of others.