TEXT [Commentary]

3.   The oath and the rope as signs (2:14-24)

14 “We offer our own lives as a guarantee for your safety,” the men agreed. “If you don’t betray us, we will keep our promise and be kind to you when the LORD gives us the land.”

15 Then, since Rahab’s house was built into the town wall, she let them down by a rope through the window. 16 “Escape to the hill country,” she told them. “Hide there for three days from the men searching for you. Then, when they have returned, you can go on your way.”

17 Before they left, the men told her, “We will be bound by the oath we have taken only if you follow these instructions. 18 When we come into the land, you must leave this scarlet rope hanging from the window through which you let us down. And all your family members—your father, mother, brothers, and all your relatives—must be here inside the house. 19 If they go out into the street and are killed, it will not be our fault. But if anyone lays a hand on people inside this house, we will accept the responsibility for their death. 20 If you betray us, however, we are not bound by this oath in any way.”

21 “I accept your terms,” she replied. And she sent them on their way, leaving the scarlet rope hanging from the window.

22 The spies went up into the hill country and stayed there three days. The men who were chasing them searched everywhere along the road, but they finally returned without success.

23 Then the two spies came down from the hill country, crossed the Jordan River, and reported to Joshua all that had happened to them. 24 “The LORD has given us the whole land,” they said, “for all the people in the land are terrified of us.”

NOTES

2:14 we will . . . be kind to you. Lit., “we will do to you loving-kindness and faithfulness,” i.e., “we will deal with you in faithful loving-kindness.”

2:15 built into the town wall. City walls were expensive to build and to maintain. Thus, ancient walled cities were compact and crowded; it was relatively common to build private houses utilizing the city wall as part of their own architecture. The archaeological excavations of Jericho show it had an inner and an outer defensive wall on different levels of the slope on which the city wall was built. Rahab’s house was inside the lower (revetment) wall, but outside the upper (parapet) wall. Thus, she could hide the men on the flat roof of her house (2:6) and also let them down through her window, down the outer side of the city wall (Wood 1990a:56). (Earlier suggestions that Jericho’s walls at this time were of the common casemate construction do not seem to be borne out by Wood’s reassessment of the evidence on the ground.)

2:16 Escape to the hill country. Westward to the edge of the hills of central Canaan (which begin their steep rise just west of Jericho) was the last direction the king’s agents would have expected the two scouts to go because Israel’s camp lay eastward across the Jordan.

for three days. This time frame is not necessarily in conflict with Joshua’s instructions of 1:11 that Israel would cross the Jordan River in three days. It is possible Joshua had “sent out [the] two spies” (2:1) before that announcement to the camp of Israel. Alternatively, Joshua’s plan to cross the Jordan in three days may have been delayed by a day or more. “Three days” may even have been an idiomatic way of saying “soon” (or “recently,” when referring to the recent past), as it often is elsewhere.

2:17 Before they left. This is implied, rather than stated, in the Hebrew text (see commentary).

2:18 you must leave. Lit., “you must tie.”

this scarlet rope. This is the first mention of the color of the rope. Woudstra (1981:75) ­suggests the scouts may have brought the rope with them.

2:19 If they go . . . their death. The formulaic statement is literally, “His blood [will be] on his own head,” and “His blood [will be] on our head.” This is a standard biblical way of stating responsibility for someone’s safety or, alternatively, for that person’s death. The spies accepted responsibility for any and all of Rahab’s family who remained with her in her house. However, if anyone were to leave her house before Jericho was taken, that one would be responsible for his or her own death.

2:21 leaving the scarlet rope. Lit., “She tied the scarlet rope in the window.”

2:22 three days. See note on 2:16.

everywhere along the road. This implies the king’s agents looked mostly or exclusively in the direction of the Jordan, as Rahab had suggested they should.

2:24 all the people in the land are terrified of us. The scouts reported to Joshua exactly what Rahab had told them, using the verb Rahab had used, mug [TH4127, ZH4570] (to melt).

COMMENTARY [Text]

More than a third of this chapter details the provisions of the scouts’ oath to spare the lives of Rahab and her family. This demonstrates Rahab’s faith in Israel and in Israel’s God. It also shows the seriousness of an oath taken in God’s name. The author reported in his account of the conquest of Jericho that Joshua did take his men’s oath seriously, and dispatched these two to see that Rahab and her family were spared (6:22).

The text implies that only Rahab knew of the scout’s mission; as long as she kept their secret, they were bound by their oath to her, sworn in Yahweh’s name at her request. Then, when the Israelite forces actually entered Jericho, safety for Rahab’s family lay in their staying inside her house. Any who wandered outside, or who came out prematurely, thinking the fighting was over when it wasn’t, had no one to blame but themselves if they died.

This may serve us as a timely reminder. In many life situations, we are afforded a refuge, a safe house, by God’s grace. But just as Rahab’s family found refuge only as they actually made their way to her house and entered it, so we must accept the gift of God’s grace. A gift accepted is no less a gift, but a gift unaccepted is not ours.

Rahab had used the Hebrew words khesed [TH2617, ZH2876] and ’emet [TH571, ZH622] in her request (2:12, see notes). In their reply, the young men responded accordingly, using these same two words (2:14). Khesed is best translated “loving-kindness,” that is, love and kindness going beyond obligation or duty. ’Emet is “faithfulness, truth.” These are the most important characteristics of God, if we reckon by the number of times they are used of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. God’s people should reflect God’s character. In Joshua 2 we see two of God’s people promising to act in character with God—that is, in “faithful loving-kindness”—in their dealings with Rahab.

The timing and sequence of some of the dialogue and some of the action of this chapter can be confused if we are not careful. Rahab hid Joshua’s scouts under bundles of flax on her roof before the king’s agents appeared at her door. After they left, but before the scouts had gone to sleep, she went back up to the roof to talk with them, and make their arrangements for the future. We may assume they slept a few hours, then Rahab let them down the wall outside her window in the dead of night, by the scarlet rope either she or they had provided. This scenario avoids the precarious assumption that all the arrangements were made while the two scouts dangled on the rope, below the window but several feet (at least) above the ground below them. The tenses of the Hebrew verbs in the narrative give us perfect freedom to picture the scenes this way.

As for the rope, Rahab may have left it tied to the window frame from that night on. No one could have seen it from inside the city. Alternatively, the grammar of the narrative does not require that Rahab left the rope tied in her window that night. She could have removed it then, and replaced it later, at any time during the first six days of Israel’s march around Jericho. The text of 2:18 says simply, “she tied” it.

The scarlet rope (2:18, 21) often has been interpreted as a type of redemption in Christ, of our escape from the doom of sin’s judgment through his blood, shed on Calvary’s cross. There is nothing wrong with this symbolic understanding if we don’t press it to make the text say more than it intends to say and if we don’t allow the metaphorical understanding to obscure the very real deliverance Rahab found in God’s grace mediated through the two young Israelite spies.

Joshua sent the spies to gather military intelligence of strategic and/or tactical importance. They brought him more. Their report of the fear possessing the people of Jericho surely raised the spirits and morale of the Israelites, about to cross the Jordan and engage the Canaanites in the battles their parents had died in the wilderness to avoid.