Reading Rahab

TIKVA FRYMER-KENSKY
University of Chicago

As we study a biblical story, often simple on its surface, it opens like a rose
to reveal complexities and signi˜cance unhinted at on the surface. I am de-
lighted to dedicate this reading to Moshe Greenberg, who taught us to lift our
eyes from the word and the verse and to look at biblical texts as coherent lit-
erary units.
The historical books of the Bible open with the story of Rahab, the pros-
titute who saved the Israelite spies trapped in Jericho. On the surface, this is
a charming story of a familiar antitype in folklore, the prostitute-with-the-
heart-of-gold. This biblical Suzie Wong is helpful to the spies, has close ties
with her family, and faith in God’s might. But the charm does not explain its
prominence as the ˜rst of the conquest stories, strongly associated with the tri-
umphal entry into the land. Its importance begins to become clearer as we take
a careful look at the way the story is constructed. It begins and ends with a
frame: the charge that Joshua gives the two men that he is sending on a re-
connaissance mission and their report to him. He tells them to “go and see the
land and Jericho” (Josh 2:1), and they return to declare, “God has given the
land into our hands; all the inhabitants are melting away before us” (Josh 2:24).1
Neither we nor the spies are given more information. Joshua doesn’t charge
the men to discover the defenses, and they do not gather any military informa-
tion. In the next “spy story,” when Joshua sends men to Ai (Josh 7:2– 4), he
makes it clear that the men are to ‘spy’, using the key word *rgl, a technical
term also used in the later story of the Danite spies at Laish (Judg 18:2–11).
Yet another “spy story” in the Deuteronomistic History uses a separate tech-
nical term *tû r ‘to scout’, the term used in one of the biblical stories that is a
direct “intertext” to our story: Moses’ sending of the spies to scout the land in
Numbers 13.

1. Gam does not always mean ‘and’; more often it means ‘in return, in consequence of ’.

57
58 Tikva Frymer-Kensky

The Rahab story is a masterpiece of allusive writing. It is set in the ˜rst

˜ve chapters of the book of Joshua, which contain numerous pentateuchal al-
lusions designed to have readers keep in mind the activities of Moses as they
read Joshua. The beginning of the book introduces Joshua as the second Moses
when God announces to Joshua that he will be with him as he was with Moses
(Josh 1:5). Events of these chapters then recapitulate events at the beginning
of Moses’ mission. An angel appears to Joshua with sword extended and tells
him to remove his shoes because the ground on which he stands is holy ground
(Josh 5:15); Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3:5) is the only other person told
this. The burning bush theophany in Exodus is followed by a frightening scene:
when Moses ˜rst heads to Egypt to begin the process of redemption, God at-
tacks him and is only assuaged when Zipporah circumcises their son with a
˘int knife (Exodus 4); similarly, Joshua circumcises the Israelites with ˘int
knives (Joshua 5).2 The most striking parallel is the Israelite’s miraculous cross-
ing of the Jordan; Israel passes through the Red Sea on the way to the desert
and through the Jordan on its way out of the desert. Both crossings are miracu-
lous, and mention of them has major frightening impact on foreign nations. In
this context, it is not surprising that the Rahab story, the ˜rst of the tales of the
conquest, should contain a parallel to the story of Moses and the spies.
When Moses sends the twelve spies, one to a tribe, he gives them a spe-
ci˜c charge: “you shall see what this land is and whether the people living there
are weak or strong, few or numerous; whether this land is good or not good
and whether the cities are open or forti˜ed; whether the land is fat or thin, is
wooded or not, and you shall be strong and bring back fruit” (Num 13:18–20).
The spies are all choice men, great men of Israel, whose names are recorded.
Nevertheless, despite their pedigree, these great men conclude that the land can-
not be conquered. The nations are strong; the land can be lethal, and there are
giants in the land, compared to whom the Israelites look and feel like grass-
hoppers (Num 13:30–33). Only two men, Joshua and Caleb, trust Israel can
conquer the land. As a result, the entire generation stays in the wilderness until
death overtakes them.
Now, in the book of Joshua, it is forty years later, and a new generation
is poised to enter the land. This time, Joshua sends only two men.3 They are
not said to be prominent; on the contrary, the story gives the impression that

2. These parallels are seen by Robert Alter, who points out that the word baderek ‘on the
way’ is used in both stories. In Exodus they are on the way to Egypt; in Joshua they were not cir-
cumcised on the way from Egypt (The World of Biblical Literature [New York: Basic Books, 1992]
117–21).
3. See Robert Culley, “Stories of the Conquest: Joshua 2, 6, 7, and 8,” HAR 8 (1984) 25– 44.
See also Yair Zakovitch, who overplays the ordinariness of the women (“Humor and Theology or
the Successful Failure of Israelite Intelligence: A Literary-Folkloric Approach to Joshua 2,” in Text
and Tradition: The Hebrew Bible and Folklore [ed. Susan Niditch; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990]
75–98).

spread run half pica long

 Reading Rahab 59

Joshua picked any two men. The men are sent with no clear charge and not
told what they should report. They are not special men and never give any im-
pression of initiative or daring throughout the story.4 However, this time, these
two ordinary men come back with the report that only the exceptional Joshua
and Caleb could give before: that God has given the land to Israel.
Within this framework of charge and response, the story of Rahab unfolds.
In the next act, the men go directly to the house of Rahab the prostitute where
they are almost caught, but she hides them, lies to the king’s men, and then
helps them escape. Hiding and lying is the way biblical women demonstrate
their loyalty. For example, when Absalom is alerted that the sons of Zadok have
gone to warn David, they quickly lower themselves into a well on the property
of a man in Bahurim. The woman of the house spreads a cover over the well
and then declares that the men had already returned to Jerusalem (2 Sam 17:17–
22). The Canaanite General Sisera expects Yael to give him exactly this kind
of protective deception, saying that he was not there (Judg 4:18–20).5
There is yet another subtle allusion to a biblical woman who hides: when
Rahab hides the spies, the author uses the relatively rare word *spn: watispEnô
‘and she hid him’. The knowledgeable reader will think immediately of the story
of Moses’ birth, when Moses’ mother saved him by hiding him: watispEnehû
‘and she hid him’. This phrase occurs only twice in the whole Bible, and the
reader, alerted by the manifold allusions to Moses in Joshua 1–5, may catch
the resonance: as the “hiding” of the infant Moses started the Exodus events,
so Rahab’s “hiding” of the representatives of the infant Israel begins the pro-
cess of the conquest.
Rahab asks that she and her family be spared in the destruction, as a com-
passionate service hesed in return for the hesed she has shown them. The spies
duly promise, and in Joshua 6 we hear that she was indeed saved. Once again,
this story has a very close “narrative analogy.” In the story of the conquest of
Bethel in the ˜rst chapter of the book of Judges, the Josephites who are scout-
ing Bethel see a man coming out of the city. They oˆer him hesed if he will
reveal the entrance to his city (by sparing him when they defeat the city).6 But
the story of the man who revealed the entrance to this important city is told in
four verses. In contrast, Rahab’s story takes up a whole chapter and then still
has to be ˜nished in chap. 6.
The Rahab story is not longer because it contains details. On the contrary,
the story is so sparse that scholars have speculated that chap. 2 is a vestige of

4. Zakovitch, “Humor and Theology.” This should be read with Frank M. Cross, “Reply to
Zakovitch,” in Text and Tradition, 99–106.
5. She, of course, has other ideas; see the discussion below. Even Rahab’s act of lowering the
men out her window has a biblical parallel, for Saul’s daughter Michal saves David by lowering
him out the window and then lying about her reasons (1 Sam 19:9–17).
6. Judg 1:22–26. The importance of this analogy is noted by Robert G. Boling, Joshua: A New
Translation with Notes and Commentary (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1982).
60 Tikva Frymer-Kensky

an originally longer tale.7 Only the important narrative sequences are related,
and the story is full of “gaps” that the readers must ˜ll in by considering
analogous texts and by imagination and speculation. Why did Joshua send the
spies? There are clues in Numbers 13, but the narrators say nothing explicitly.
Why did the spies go to Rahab’s house? Is it because a prostitute’s establish-
ment is a good place to blend in unobserved and listen to people,8 or is it
because men who have been out in the wilderness all their lives immediately
head to the bordello for soft beds and soft women? The narrator doesn’t say;
the reader can decide.9 How did the king ˜nd out? Some suspicious readers
have suggested that Rahab herself sent word so that she could demand hesed.10
The story attains its length, not by narrative detail, but by the inclusion of
three dialogues, each of which is vitally important in understanding the sig-
ni˜cance of this story to Israel.
The ˜rst dialogue is an interchange between Rahab and the king of Jericho.
He assumes that the men are spies who have come “to investigate” the land11
and demands that she bring them out. This is Rahab’s moment of truth, and
she chooses Israel, declaring, “The men came to me, but I didn’t know from
whence; and when the gate was about to close at dark, the men went out I know
not whither” (Josh 2:4–5). Rahab is smart, proactive, tricky, and unafraid to
disobey and deceive the king.12 She reminds us of two other women who are
portrayed in this way, the two midwives in Egypt who defy the Pharaoh’s or-
ders to slay the Hebrew children. Once again, the beginning of the conquest
echoes the beginning of the Exodus.

7. J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981) and Robert

Culley, “Stories of the Conquest.”
8. So Ann Engar, “Old Testament Women as Tricksters,” Mapping of the Biblical Terrain:
The Bible as Text (ed. Vincent Tollers and John Maier; Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press,
1990) 143–57.
9. Josephus Ant. 6.2 ˜lls in at this juncture by explaining that the spies ˜rst surveyed the
city; only then did they go to Rahab’s. In modern times, Ottosson suggests that the fact that the men
went to Rahab’s house suggests that she was associated with them either because she was origi-
nally a nomadic woman or because she belonged to asocial circles (Magnus Ottosson, “Rahab and
the Spies,” in Dumu-é-dub-ba-a: Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjö berg (ed. Hermann Behrens, Dar-
lene Loding, and Martha T. Roth; Philadelphia: Babylonian Section, University Museum, 1989). On
the other hand, Zakovitch is extremely negative in his judgment of the men, whom he considers
“˜rst-class bunglers” (Zakovitch, “Humor and Theology”).
10. Rahab has suˆered greatly at the hands of some modern scholars. Once again, it is Zak-
ovitch who is most extreme and suggests that it was Rahab herself who informed the king in order
to make the men obligated to her (ibid., p. 85).
11. The king uses the word *hpr, the very word that Deuteronomy 1 uses in referring to the
spies that Moses sent.
12. The “trickery” of Rahab, like the trickery of other women in the Bible, has occasioned
much disapproval and defense. See my In the Wake of the Goddesses (New York: Macmillan, 1992)
136–39, especially the discussion on Rivkah.

spread run half pica short

 Reading Rahab 61

Rahab is also dominant in the third dialogue, between herself and the spies
(2:16–21). When Rahab lowers them outside her window, she tells them to
˘ee to the hills. This seemingly extraneous suggestion is a clue to yet another
intertext, the story of Lot and the angels in Genesis 19, in which the angels
tell Lot to “˘ee to the hills.” The stories ˜rst seem very unlike each other, but
they share a similar vocabulary13 and similar plot sequence: two men enter and
lodge in a city that is about to be destroyed; their host de˜es a demand to
“bring out the men,” the city is destroyed, the inhabitant who lodged them is
saved and told to “˘ee to the hills,” and the story ends with an etiological no-
tice about the descendants of the host. A lexical allusion further reinforces the
reference, for Rahab is said to have saved the ‘envoys’ malåakîm, the same He-
brew word that is also translated ‘angels’ (Josh 6:25)14 and is used for the an-
gels in Sodom. There are further parallels: both stories take place in the Jordan
plain and may have originally been preserved as local legends, and in both cases
the men lodge in the house of a character who is marginal to the city’s social
structure: Lot as an outsider, Rahab as a prostitute. However, Lot is hesitant
and tentative as the angels save him; in Joshua, the visitors are saved by the
assertive, proactive Rahab.15
The men adjure Rahab to gather her family into her house and to tie a
scarlet cord in the window. The family must stay inside during the destruction;
whoever ventures outside may be killed. Only those who stay inside the house
marked with the scarlet cord will be safe from devastation. Once again, the alert
reader, ancient and modern, catches the reference: on the night of the slaying
of the ˜rst born of Egypt, the Israelites were to mark their doors with lamb’s
blood and stay inside in order to be safe from destruction.16 Once again, the
saved are to stay inside the house marked in red; Rahab’s family is to be res-
cued from Jericho, as the Israelites were from Egypt.17 This resourceful out-
sider, Rahab the trickster, is a new Israel.
The second discourse is the heart of the story. Rahab begins by acknowl-
edging God’s intentions: “I know that God has given you this land and that

13. F. Langlamet, “Josué, II, et les traditions de l’Héxateuque,” RB 78 (1971) 5–17, 161–83,
321–54. Langlamet ˜nds 17 lexical correspondences between Joshua 2 and Genesis 19.
14. For a study of these two texts together, see L. Daniel Hawk, “Strange Houseguest: Rahab,
Lot and the Dynamics of Deliverance,” Reading between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew
Bible (ed. Danna Nolan Fewell; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1992) 89–97. To his par-
allels, I would add the fact that they both happened in the same plain.
15. This is the conclusion reached by Hawk, ibid.
16. Exodus 12. For the allusion, see Engar, “Old Testament Women.”
17. Verses 19–21 are sometimes considered a later addition in order to explain the scarlet
cord. Taking another tack, Hawk suggests that the scarlet cord (tiqwat hû t hasanî ) may be nothing
more than the ‘hope’ (tiqwâ) associated with the ‘two’ (snê). However, the many references to the
Exodus redemption throughout this story indicate that this episode is both original and a reminder
of the saving of the ˜rstborn.
62 Tikva Frymer-Kensky

dread of you has fallen upon us, and all the inhabitants of the land are melting
before you” (2:9). This is clearly an exaggeration: if no one has the spirit to
stand against Israel, what are the king of Jericho and his soldiers doing chas-
ing these envoys? But it is an important message, and Rahab is the oracle who
declares that God has given Israel the land. She is the ˜rst of the prophets who
appear in the historical books to announce to Israel the paths of their history
and the ˜rst of the women who declare and pronounce the will of God. The
lines of women and prophets begin with Rahab and converge again at the end
of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles in the ˜gure of Huldah the prophetess, who an-
nounces the destruction of Judah.
Rahab’s speech is couched in language familiar to the readers in ancient
Israel. The use of the special terms åêmâ ‘dread’ and namog ‘melt’ introduce
us to the vocabulary of the Holy War of the conquest of Canaan;18 these par-
ticular phrases allude to the great song of Israel’s sacred history, the Song of
the Sea, preserved in Exodus 15: “All the dwellers of Canaan are aghast, terror
and dread descend upon them.”19 The prediction made by the song is indeed
coming true—the process of conquest has truly started.
Rahab acknowledges God with the words “I know,” the very words with
which Jethro pronounces his faith in God: “Now I know that the Lord is greater
than all gods” (Exod 18:11) and with which the Syrian general, Naaman, de-
clares God’s greatness: “for I know that there is no such God in all the land”
(2 Kgs 5:15). This phrase, I know, is a formula by which people from foreign
nations come to acknowledge God. This literary use may have its origin in a
rite of passage, a kind of proto-conversion, that may have been practiced in
ancient Israel. In the historical books, Rahab is presented as the ˜rst of the
inhabitants of the land to join God and Israel.20
In return for her demonstration of loyalty in saving the spies, Rahab asks
for hesed from Israel. Her request for hesed is reminiscent of the request that
Abimelech made of Abraham: “Do with me according to the hesed that I did
to you” (Gen 21:23).21 Abimelech sought a treaty with Abraham; Rahab seeks
an arrangement with Israel. This doesn’t mean that the ˜nished text of the
Genesis story was in the possession of the author of the Rahab story. On the
contrary, the verbal correspondence between them comes from the fact that
both use legal language, re˘ecting the juridical importance of this treaty trans-
action. Rahab’s speech contains all the essential elements of the classic deu-

18. See Dennis McCarthy, “Some Holy War Vocabulary in Joshua 2,” CBQ 33 (1971) 228–30.
19. Exod 15:15–16. The connection was noted by the ancient rabbis in Mekilta Shirata 9. Ra-
hab reverses the order of these two sentences, as is the rule in biblical quotations (see Zakovitch,
“Humor and Theology,” 89).
20. See Gordon Mitchell, “Together in the Land: A Reading of the Book of Joshua,” JSOT
134 (1993) 152–90.
21. Ottosson, “Rahab and the Spies.”

spread run half pica short

 Reading Rahab 63

teronomic form of covenants. The preamble and the prologue, in which Rahab
confesses the greatness of God, are in vv. 9–11; Rahab’s stipulations (salvation
for family and sign of assurance) are in vv. 12–13, and the Israelite’s stipula-
tions (silence and staying within house) and the sanctions (salvation/death) are
in vv. 18–20; the oath is in vv. 14 and 17; and the sign (the scarlet cord) is in
vv. 18–21.22 This request for hesed is a formal arrangement by which Rahab
seeks to join Israel, and the oath and sign that the Israelites give is their ac-
ceptance of her and her family into this arrangement.
The denouement of the story comes in Joshua 6. When the Israelites con-
quer Jericho, Joshua sends the two men to Rahab’s house, they bring out Rahab
and her family, and she lives ‘in the midst of Israel’ beqereb yisraåel “until this
very day” (Josh 6:25). All has ended happily, Israel has been enriched by the
family of a heroine, and the conquest has begun.
But is this the way the conquest is to proceed? Deuteronomy has very dif-
ferent ideas about how to treat the inhabitants of the land: “You must doom
them to destruction, make no pacts with them, grant them no quarter.”23 The
idea of herem, total war, is an essential cornerstone of Deuteronomy’s philo-
sophy of history: the slaughter is necessary so that the inhabitants do not then
introduce foreign ideas and foreign ways into Israel. The story of the conquest
of Jericho in chap. 6 uses eleven variations of the verb hrm. Just before Joshua
sends the spies to get Rahab, the narrator tells us, “They destroyed everything
in the city, man and woman, youth and aged.” In this context, it seems strange
to see Rahab and her family joining Israel, and one might conclude that the
˜rst thing that the Israelites did on entering Canaan was to break the rule of
the herem.24
This saving of Rahab from the herem seems even more problematic as we
proceed to the next chapter in Joshua, which relates the Israelite defeat at Ai
and its cause; Achan’s violation of the herem at Jericho. The two situations
seem parallel, with parallel phrases: as Rahab is in the midst of Israel, Israel
is warned that it must take away the herem in its midst, the herem being the
Sumerian cloak that Achan took from Jericho. Achan and all that is his are
killed just as Rahab and all that is hers are saved; the mound of stones that
marked the spot stands in Israel “to this very day.” Given the Deuteronomic
explanation that the herem is to prevent contamination by foreign ideas, it
would seem that saving people from the herem is a more serious violation than

22. K. M. Campbell, “Rahab’s Covenant,” VT 22 (1972) 243– 45.

23. Deut 7:2, and see Deut 20:17.
24. For discussions of this issue, see Lyle Eslinger, Into the Hands of the Living God (Shef-
˜eld: Almond, 1989) 24–54. Polzin’s theory that the story itself is a meditation on the issues of jus-
tice and mercy is unconvincing in that it requires him to make Rahab deserving of extermination
and entirely undeserving of being saved (Moses and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the
Deuteronomic History [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993]).
64 Tikva Frymer-Kensky

saving a cloak, and we might begin to suspect that there is a dark side to the
Rahab story. And yet—Achan’s “liberation” of the cloak is punished by a de-
feat at Ai, whereas the men’s promise to liberate Rahab is followed by a glori-
ous victory. In fact, the conquest of Jericho is clearly a conquest by God, who
intervenes to perform a miracle of felling the walls, a clear mark that Israel
has not angered God by agreeing to save Rahab. The juxtaposition of the Ra-
hab and Achan stories presents a discourse on the nature of the herem and obe-
dience to it. When Achan ignored the herem for sel˜sh reasons, all of Israel
was punished until he was found and executed; when the men of Israel ignored
the herem as an act of hesed to repay hesed, then God reacted by miraculously
conquering Jericho. The herem, this story would seem to imply, is not an ab-
solute and should be superseded by issues of justice and mercy.25
The next group of stories in the book of Joshua also revolves around this
issue of the herem and its application. After Ai, the book turns to the Gibeon-
ites. Rahab states, “For we have heard how God dried up the Reed Sea before
you as you went out of Egypt and (we have heard) what you did to the two
Amorite kings of Transjordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed”
(2:10). With the same words, “for we have heard,” the Gibeonites describe their
coming to believe in God: “for we have heard the reports of Him and all that
He did in Egypt and all that He did to Sihon king of Heshbon and to Og king
of the Bashan” (Josh 9:9–10). The name of God has grown great, the report
has gone out. The kings of the Amorites gather to ˜ght, but the Gibeonites are
moved by this report to try to ally themselves with Israel. Knowing that Israel
is not to sign pacts with the local people,26 they trick Israel into believing that
they come from far away.27 They remain in Israel as hewers of wood and draw-
ers of water for both the community and for the altar of God. Once again, a
tricky outsider has escaped the herem and joined Israel. And once again, when
the Gibeonites are attacked and Israel comes to their rescue, Israel wins by a
miracle. As the sun stands still, God has come visibly and directly to the aid
of Israel.
The Rahab and Gibeon stories in Joshua may indicate that Israel had a
tradition that told the story of the conquest as a process during which many
inhabitants of the land stayed and became aligned with and ultimately joined
Israel. This tradition understood the herem to have applied only to those na-
tions or kings who actively opposed Israel. The “Amorites” do not ˜ght in Josh
5:1, and no battle is related; the Canaanite kings in 9:1–2 resolve to ˜ght and
are defeated; the alliance under King Jabin fought, and Hazor was destroyed

25. See Mitchell, “Together in the Land.”

26. They, like Rahab, seem to have studied Deuteronomy.
27. They pretend to be from far away by aging their clothes and equipment, patching their
sandals and bringing dry crumbly bread as they come to a people for whom God has performed the
miracle of not allowing their clothes and shoes to wear out during the forty years in the desert.
 Reading Rahab 65

as a result (Joshua 11). In this view of the settlement of Canaan, the battles
of conquest were “defensive,” fought against those who sought to resist Israel.
However, those who were convinced by the stories of God’s might were as-
similated rather than destroyed.28 This view of the conquest as a process that
included the amalgamation and incorporation of local inhabitants is strikingly
like the account of the settlement of Israel that is currently accepted by archae-
ologists and historians.
Rahab and the Gibeonites refer to Egypt and to Sihon and Og; signi˜-
cantly, God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” and later did the same to Sihon and
Og. In these cases, the stubbornness of the people served as the justi˜cation
for conquering them, and their conquest followed a pattern of demoralization,
hardening, and annihilation. One might ask why God “hardened” some people’s
hearts and not others’.29 In the case of Pharaoh, Exodus tells us he hardened
his own heart before God hardened it. This may also have been true of Sihon
and Og. Since Sihon and Og wanted to ˜ght Israel, God made their resolve
even ˜rmer. Rahab and the Gibeonites show that there was an alternative to
˜ghting the Israelites and that those whose heart was moved to fear God did
avoid destruction. On the other hand, Josh 11:19–20 declares that God hard-
ened everyone’s heart (except Gibeon) to ˜ght so that they would be destroyed.
In any event, God must have had God’s own reasons for sparing these people.
The book of Joshua is part of the Deuteronomistic History, a re˘ection
on Israel’s history written at the time of the destruction, when the sky was fall-
ing, that attempts to make sense out of the fact that God has caused (or at least
allowed) Israel to be destroyed. Deuteronomy does not trust foreign alliances
or foreign women and couples its demand for the herem with a prohibition of
intermarriage with the local inhabitants.30 To Deuteronomy, the very purpose
of the herem is to prevent intermingling and intermarriage and the subsequent
introduction of “foreign” ideas into Israel.31 Josh 23:13 and Judg 2:3 (both
deuteronomic passages) explain why many inhabitants of the land are not eradi-
cated: they are to be “a snare and a trap” for Israel “a scourge to your sides
and thorns in your eyes” that will ultimately lead to Israel’s loss of the land.
From this perspective, the nations that remain are the source of evil danger,
and Rahab, saved as an act of reciprocated hesed, is ultimately a stumbling
block to Israel’s survival. The rescue of Rahab is Israel’s ˜rst act of apostasy,
committed immediately after Israel’s entry into the land. The Deuteronomist does

28. Lawson Stone, “Ethical and Apologetic Tendencies in the Redaction of the Book of
Joshua,” CBQ 53 (1991) 25–36.
29. Eslinger (Into the Hands, 24–54) attributes this to a “failing” by God, who did not per-
form the divine duty.
30. To the Deuteronomistic Historian, Solomon’s one ˘aw was the fact that he loved foreign
women, including the daughter of Pharaoh (1 Kgs 11:1–3).
31. Deut 7:1–5, 20:18.
66 Tikva Frymer-Kensky

not make any directly negative statements: the repeated use of the verb herem
in Joshua 6 reminds the reader of Deuteronomy and insinuates that the saving
of Rahab contains the ˜rst seeds of the nation’s destruction.
The very ˜rst words of the Rahab story inform us that Joshua was at Shit-
tim when he sent out the spies. Whether this detail was original or added by
a later hand, Shittim subtly cues us (the biblically-sophisticated readers) to the
wider rami˜cations of the story in the underlying discourse about the perme-
ability of Israel’s boundaries. Shittim is the place where Israel angered God by
going astray with the Moabite women in the incident of Baçal-peor in Num-
bers 25. During this incident, moreover, an Israelite man called Zimri brought
a Midianite princess, Cozbi, into the Israelite camp and his chambers. Immedi-
ately, Phineas the priest stabbed them both. For this act, Numbers 25 records,
Phineas was rewarded with a brît shalôm ‘a pact of peace’. As we juxtapose
these two Shittim stories, Rahab’s position, profession, and name take on new
signi˜cance. There is no hint of sex in the Rahab story, but Rahab is a pro-
fessional prostitute, a zonâ, the same word (zanâ) with which Israel is de-
scribed as going astray at Shittim. Rahab’s very name means ‘wide, broad’. She
is the ‘broad of Jericho’—the wide-open woman who is the wide-open door to
Canaan and maybe the open door to apostasy.32 Cozbi, on the other hand, was
a princess of Midian, and marriage with her might have facilitated alliances
and peace with Midian. But Cozbi’s name means ‘deception’, and she is killed
immediately. She is not given any chance to profess her loyalty to God or Is-
rael. To Phineas (and to the narrator of the story), the sight of a foreign woman
being brought into Israel is such a danger that she must be eradicated imme-
diately, she and the man who brought her to him. Had this same33 Phineas
been at Jericho, Rahab would have been killed rather than spared. The Cozbi
story is clearly and unequivocally against intermerging; the Rahab story pre-
sents both voices to this long-standing Israelite dispute. Rahab the trickster-
foreigner is a type of Israel, who survives by her wits and comes to God by
her faith. Rahab the whore is the outsider’s outsider; the most marginal of the
marginal. She is the quintessential downtrodden from whom Israel comes and
with whom Israel identi˜es.34 Just as her pious behavior reverses expectations
of how prostitutes act, so her elevation is a reversal of the normal expectations
for a prostitute’s future. Once again, as in choosing the younger sons and free-
ing the slaves, YHWH interrupts normative societal expectations by calling the

32. The most negative valuation is given by Lyle Eslinger, who states unequivocally, “Rahab
is characterized as a whore precisely because she is the door, left open by the divine whoremonger,
through which the Israelites are led to stray, ‘a-whoring after other Gods’ ” (Into the Hands, 46).
33. We can assume that the Israelites at Jericho included Phineas the priest but not the same
narrative character full of murderous zeal.
34. Phyllis A. Bird, “The Harlot as a Heroine: Narrative Art and Social Presupposition in Three
Old Testament Texts,” Semeia 46 (Narrative Research on the Hebrew Bible; 1989) 119–39.

page run half pica short

 Reading Rahab 67

poor and the downtrodden and raising them over others. The saving of Rahab
the good Canaanite prostitute is part of and an example of God’s nature and Is-
rael’s mission. Her name, Rahab the broad, is emblematic of God’s inclusion of
the many and of the permeable boundaries of the people of Israel. Phineas and
the Deuteronomy see the open boundaries as danger; another reader may see
them as opportunity.
In the end, it is the reader—both singly and in community—who must de-
cide how to read Rahab. After the exile, some of Israel’s prophets view the early
remnant nations as signs of hope that Israel will survive;35 they no longer share
the deuteronomic view. Despite the fact that Ezra and Nehemiah demanded that
the Israelites divorce their foreign wives and that intermarriage was prohibited
in the Maccabean period, Christian and Jewish tradition both remember Rahab
as an exemplary positive ˜gure.36 She is cited in the Second Testament as a
model of faith37 and as a second Abraham, justi˜ed by her deeds.38 In Jewish
tradition she is remembered as one of the great righteous proselytes.39 In one
major midrashic tradition, she marries Joshua40 and becomes the ancestress of
priests and prophets, including Jeremiah and Ezekiel.41
This righteous proselyte-prophet is listed in Matthew as the ancestor of Boaz
and thus the ancestor of David. Jewish midrash also preserves such a tradition,
pointing out the similarity between the “scarlet threaded cord” with which Ra-
hab’s house is marked and the “scarlet thread” that marked the ˜rstborn son of
Tamar, ancestress of David, and the many parallels between Rahab and Ruth.42
Thus in both religious traditions, Rahab takes her place in the extraordinary
genealogy of the Messiah.43 These traditions have taken the choice oˆered by
the story and have read Rahab, her contribution and her inclusion, in the most
positive light possible.

35. See particularly the Philistines in Zech 9:7.

36. See Martinus Beek, “Rahab in the Light of Jewish Exegesis (Josh 2:1–24; 6:17, 22–23,
25),” Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift fü r Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg (ed. W. C.
Delsman; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982) 37– 44.
37. See Heb 11:31.
38. Jas 2:25.
39. In Midras Tadse 21, Midras Chronicles iv 21, Rabbah, she is one of the righteous of the
world and proof that God accepts sinners.
40. b. Meg. 14b.
41. Ruth Rab. 2:1; and cf. Numbers Rab. 8:9.
42. Midras Hagadôl Hayye Sarah 94.
43. Even though some doubts have been expressed (Jerome Quinn, “Is Rachab in Matt 1:5
Rahab of Jericho,” Bib 62 [1981] 225–28), there is general consensus that Rahab of Jericho is the
Rahab in Matthew (Raymond Brown, “Rachab in Matt 1:5 Probably Is Rahab of Jericho,” Bib 63
[1982] 79–80).