Mtr Beth Clarke

Friends in Christ,

Who was the real Rahab? A prostitute, a Canaanite, a keeper of crimson cords, a harborer of spies, a confessor of the faith, and a member of the lineage of Jesus Christ, she contains multitudes. In today’s reading from Joshua, we meet her at the end of her parley with two scouts sent to assess Jericho as the Israelites pressed toward the Promised Land.

After defying the king’s orders, Rahab hides the spies beneath flax stalks on her roof. Once the danger passes, she negotiates for the safety of herself and her family, professing faith in the God of Israel.

When Rahab shepherds the spies out of the city, she lowers a crimson cord from her window to help them escape. The spies instruct her to hang that cord from her window when they return, when Jericho is put to the ban, and the walls come tumbling down. But not hers. Rahab’s home and family alone are saved.

In the spirit of crimson cord imagery, let’s pull on a few loose threads.

First thread: Rahab is often portrayed as a successful homeowner or madame, but biblical scholars disagree. This was her family’s home on the city’s edge. Prostitution was often entangled with exploitation and limited choices born of poverty. Her family was likely held captive to debt, desperate for liberation.

Second thread: the story unfolds during Passover season. The flax drying on Rahab’s roof indicates the barley harvest: Passover time. In her confession of faith, she recalls the parting of the Red Sea and Joshua’s defeat of the kings Sihon and Og, tying together Passovers of past and present.

The central message of Passover is liberation from bondage. God ransoms Israel out of debt slavery in Egypt, and the blood of the lamb marks the households that will be spared.

Rahab’s crimson cord recalls that blood on Israelite doorposts. Both mark households for liberation. The God who frees captives in Egypt also frees captives in Canaan.

Perhaps the final loose thread is this: if we look at Rahab and see only a prostitute before we see a captive, a survivor, and a woman of profound faith, who else have we reduced to their flattest, most convenient story? What labels have become so ingrained that we mindlessly eschew real understanding? What inherited scripts keep us from authentically encountering the other?

In other words, who are the misread Rahabs among us?

Yours in Christ,

—Mtr Beth