Several years ago, I used to be invited to write down the notes for a recent women’s study Bible. The project was unexpected and felt unusual to me, because I’d never read a women’s study Bible myself and I used to be skeptical concerning the need for one. Why can’t all of us just read the identical Bible? But after praying concerning the offer, I felt led to simply accept—hoping I would find a way to supply something of value to women who picked up the Bible. But I had no idea how transformative the project would find yourself being for me!
In my 4 many years working in Christian schools, churches, and other ministries—and with three degrees in Bible to my name—nobody had ever asked me to read the Bible as a girl and for ladies. I had never approached the Bible while asking, What are women going to wonder about after they read this? What’s going to hassle them? What will capture their attention?
Because my pastors and theology professors were all men, and a lot of the books I read concerning the Bible were written by men, I learned to read Scripture generically—ignoring myself as much as possible so I could see the world through their eyes. Some of my professors considered the plight of ladies or the roles of ladies, but none of them had embodied experiences which helped them enter the biblical stories of ladies. This was not their fault, and it didn’t make their teaching irrelevant, nevertheless it did make my understanding of Scripture incomplete.
As I reread the Old and New Testaments, focusing each on the ladies within the text and the ladies who would read it, so many biblical stories got here to life for me in an entire recent way. I used to be forced to wrestle with difficult passages that seemed hard on women. But as I wrestled with these stories with the assistance of others, I discovered profound insights concerning the goodness of God.
Reading on behalf of ladies also sensitized me to the feminine characters in Scripture who’re too often sidelined or caricatured with one-dimensional labels like prostitute, sister, seductress, widow. Not only are these portrayals sometimes inaccurate, but they’ll often distract from more essential facets of their character—akin to their courage, loyalty, creativity, and determination—in addition to their vital contribution to God’s redemptive plan outlined within the biblical narrative.
One such character is Rahab—to whose name we hasten so as to add—the prostitute. Rahab’s story is usually boiled right down to a trite takeaway: that God is willing to make use of even the basest of sinners to perform his purposes, even foreign prostitutes! But her character contributes so way more intending to Israel’s story.
Rahab was a citizen of Canaan, certainly one of the “enemies” occupying the Promised Land whom Yahweh referenced in his promise to the people of Israel: “I’ll make all of your enemies turn and run” (Ex. 23:27, NLT throughout). God’s plan involved dismantling Canaanite worship of Baal and other gods—a method or one other. We should find it remarkable, then, that the primary recorded conversation with a Canaanite within the book ends with God’s promise to guard her and her household.
Joshua often gets a foul rap for portraying a violent God who’s thirsty for Canaanite blood, but Rahab’s story reminds us to not read the book too absolutely. To right-size our expectations, let’s begin with God’s specific instructions of what precisely the Israelites were to do after they entered the land: “Break down their pagan altars and shatter their sacred pillars. Cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols” (Deut. 7:5). You’ll find no blood in these verses, because the destruction God instructs is aimed not at people but on the stones they worshipped.
As for the Canaanites themselves, the Israelites were forbidden to marry them or to make treaties with them. The reason for this prohibition was not racial but religious: “For they are going to lead your kids away from me to worship other gods” (v. 4). The people were herem, or off-limits for the Israelites. God’s plan A was to drive the Canaanites away from the land (which isn’t possible in the event that they’re dead). Yes, Canaanites died when the Israelites entered the land, but killing them was not the purpose—dismantling their pagan worship and preserving Israelite faithfulness was.
In the 2010 DreamWorks movie How to Train Your Dragon, a Viking village expends enormous energy to defend and protect themselves against dragon attacks. Their children even learn the best way to kill dragons at school. But when a village boy (aptly named Hiccup) encounters an injured dragon (a “night fury” which he names Toothless), he doesn’t kill the dragon but befriends him, even inventing a prosthetic tail wing to assist him fly again. Hiccup’s behavior is taken into account reckless and even treasonous by his village. Taming dragons was not the plan—and neither was “taming” the Canaanites.
Why, then, was Rahab spared the destruction that was to are available in the battle of Jericho?
Let’s start originally of the story, when Joshua sent two spies to scope things out in and around Jericho before the attack (Josh. 2:1). Ironically, given God’s instructions to not turn into sexually involved with the Canaanites, these spies took shelter in the house of a prostitute named Rahab. Perhaps a house of ill-repute was the one establishment on the town where visitors could pay for a room, or possibly it was the safest place to remain under the radar and avoid undue attention.
Either way, the king still found them out and demanded Rahab turn the spies over. Instead, she hid them and lied, sending the king’s men on a wild goose chase. In exchange for his or her safety, the spies promised Rahab that she and her family can be spared in the approaching battle. But the query here is, did the Israelite spies flagrantly disregard God’s instructions regarding the Canaanites? Or is Rahab a special case?
The key factor to think about is Rahab’s allegiance to Yahweh and Israel reasonably than to the king of Jericho. Her soliloquy to the spies is probably the most powerful statements of religion issuing from the lips of a foreigner in the whole Hebrew Bible: “I do know the Lord has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone within the land resides in terror. For we’ve got heard how the Lord made a dry path for you thru the Red Sea while you left Egypt” (vv. 9–10).
Rahab recounted Israel’s victories over Sihon and Og, the Amorite kings who refused to allow them to pass by peacefully on their strategy to the Promised Land. She concluded, “No wonder our hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below” (v. 11).
Rahab’s testimony is unequivocal; she recognizes Yahweh because the supreme deity. Her words echo the song of Moses and Miriam in Exodus 15, which had announced:
The peoples hear and tremble;
anguish grips those that live in Philistia.
The leaders of Edom are terrified;
the nobles of Moab tremble.
All who live in Canaan melt away;
terror and dread fall upon them. (vv. 14–16a)
For all intents and purposes, Rahab isn’t any longer a Canaanite. She has declared allegiance to the God of Israel. Sparing Rahab aligns with God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “I’ll bless those that bless you.”
Returning to our movie illustration, Rahab is Toothless the dragon, and the spies are the Hiccup in Israel’s plan to drive out the Canaanites. But the author of the Book of Joshua doesn’t frame the spies’ behavior as problematic. In fact, Rahab is shown to avoid wasting the day, and the Israelites save her life in return. And we all know that Rahab’s story ends happily ever after because she marries into the Israelite community. Interestingly, Rahab’s husband Salmon was the fourth-generation grandson of a Canaanite woman, which might need shaped his perspective on so-called foreigners.
Rahab and Salmon later bear a son, Boaz, who becomes the great-grandfather of King David after marrying Ruth, a Moabite widow—one other “off-limits” foreigner turned Israelite (see Ruth 4:18–22; Matt. 1:2–6). Through their loyalty to the God of Israel, these women turn into not only peripheral to Israel’s story but central to it. Rahab, similar to Tamar and Miriam and Zipporah and so many others, will not be just accessories but primary instruments in God’s plan for redemption as narrated in Scripture.
Like Tamar the Canaanite (Gen. 38), Jael the Kenite (Judges 4), and Ruth the Moabite (Ruth 1–4), Rahab becomes a model of religion and an ally to the people of God. In saving the Israelite spies, she humanizes the “other” and participates in carrying out Yahweh’s divine plan. Rahab stands as a shining example of what is feasible: a world by which those destined for destruction can join the people of Israel of their worship of the one true God.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that Rahab is listed within the Gospel of Matthew as an ancestor of Jesus, who also selected to avoid wasting and “tame” those that were once enemies of God—though we too were destined for destruction.
Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University. She contributed notes to 2 women’s study Bibles, the primary of which will likely be released on April 23, 2024. Every Woman’s Bible (NLT) is accessible from Tyndale House Publishers.
