TEXT [Commentary]

2.   Rahab’s request for her family (2:8-13)

8 Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up on the roof to talk with them. 9 “I know the LORD has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. 10 For we have heard how the LORD made a dry path for you through the Red Sea[*] when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed.[*] 11 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.

12 “Now swear to me by the LORD that you will be kind to me and my family since I have helped you. Give me some guarantee that 13 when Jericho is conquered, you will let me live, along with my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all their families.”

NOTES

2:9 the LORD. Heb., yhwh [TH3068, ZH3378] (Yahweh), the personal name by which God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3:14-15). This is the beginning of Rahab’s declaration of her faith in Yahweh.

living in terror. Lit., “are melting.”

2:10 Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River. Their kingdoms had been conquered earlier under Moses’s leadership, as related in Num 21:21-35.

you completely destroyed. This is the first use in Joshua of the Hebrew term kharam [TH2763, ZH3049]; see NLT mg on 2:10b, and commentary on 6:24-27.

2:11 melted in fear! Though a different verb, it is a synonym of the one in 2:9.

the LORD your God. Lit., “Yahweh your God.” As in 2:9, Rahab again used the divine name in her declaration of faith in Israel’s God.

2:12 you will be kind . . . I have helped. Lit., “I have done khesed . . . you will do khesed.” Khesed [TH2617, ZH2876] includes “loyalty” (a common translation), to be sure, but khesed is much more than “mere” loyalty (see commentary on 2:14).

some guarantee. Lit., “a sign of faithfulness,” i.e., “a sure (or faithful) sign.”

2:13 and all their families. Lit., “and all that belongs to them.” This would have included all their relatives, as well as servants, employees, and even others—potentially, many more persons.

COMMENTARY [Text]

Rahab’s statements to the spies indicate how much God’s acts on Israel’s behalf, even a generation earlier, had inspired fear in Canaan’s inhabitants. Forty years previously, God had parted the waters of the Red Sea when Israel seemed trapped by Pharaoh and his chariots. The Egyptians, attempting to follow, had been drowned when the walls of water collapsed upon them and the sea returned to normal (Exod 14:21-31). Israel’s defeat of the armies of Sihon and Og only months previously (Num 21:21-35) was recognized by Rahab and the other citizens of Jericho as the work of a God much greater than their own.

Rahab’s statement was her personal confession of faith in Yahweh. It may be translated in full, “Yahweh your God, He is God in the heavens above and upon the earth beneath” (2:11). Her faith declaration, proven genuine by her aid to Joshua’s scouts, brought Rahab into the people of God, despite her Canaanite birth and her occupation. Throughout the Torah, references to the ger [TH1616, ZH1731] (“resident alien,” “sojourner,” “foreigner”; cf. Exod 12:38; Lev 17:8; Deut 1:16; 16:11, 14), which deal with their rights or responsibilities in Israel, show an expectation that many of them were proselytes or that their descendants would become so. One implication of Deuteronomy 23:3 is that people other than Ammonites and Moabites could and did “convert” to Israel’s God and worship more readily than descendants of those two peoples. From Israel’s entrance into Canaan, Rahab and her family were just the first of many who would join Israel. Though Canaan as a whole was under judgment (cf. Gen 15:16), some were delivered by their faith in Israel’s God.

Rahab’s faith was memorialized centuries later in the New Testament tradition. In Jesus’ genealogy (Matt 1:5-6) Matthew celebrated Rahab as the wife of Salmon, mother of Boaz, and great-great-grandmother of David, ancient Israel’s greatest king. Together with Sarah, Rahab was one of only two women mentioned by name in the great faith “hall of fame” recital (Heb 11:31). Perhaps most amazingly, James held Rahab up together with Abraham as an example of living faith demonstrated by works (Jas 2:25-26).

Rahab’s report of Jericho’s terror at Israel’s coming (2:9-11) reminds us of the dismay of the 10 Israelite spies and the people who heard their report about the people of Canaan. The spies had said, “Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too” (Num 13:33). Most of Israel’s men had responded in fear: “Our wives and our little ones will be carried off as plunder” (Num 14:3). All the while, the Canaanites had been trembling at this people whom God was bringing to judge them (2:9).

We also are God’s people, called to journey with God by faith, called to assail the strongholds of the enemy with the liberating Good News of redemption in Jesus Christ. How often have we trembled in fear, not realizing or not remembering that our adversaries quake before the mighty deeds and the amazing grace of “the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below” (2:11).