The full story of Rahab and the Israelite spies can be found in Joshua 2:1-24.
Under the cover of nightfall, she quietly ushers the men up to the roof of her house. They don’t ask questions. In fact, they don’t speak at all. She points to the stalks of flax standing tall in the corner of the roof and the men nod with understanding.
“Stay here,” Rahab tells them, “and stay silent.”
They make themselves as small as they can behind the flax. It’s not the best hiding place; were anyone to come up here, they’d spot the men immediately. But it’s her only option, and she has faith that it will be enough.
She’s barely made it back downstairs to the kitchen before there’s a banging on her front door.
“Open up!” a voice shouts. “We have a message from the King!”
She was expecting this, of course. She takes a deep breath, smooths down her skirt with her sweaty palms, and opens the door.
“The King orders you to bring out the men who have come into your house,” the man says. His voice is loud and aggressive, but Rahab doesn't flinch. She’s well-accustomed to loud, aggressive men. “They’ve come to spy out the whole land.”
For a brief moment she allows herself to consider the treason she’s about to commit against her own people. She can’t even fully explain to herself why she decided to protect these men, these Israelites, with their God who dries up waters and destroys kings. But maybe that’s just it. Maybe somewhere deep down she knows that this Israelite God truly is the God in heaven above and on earth below. And just maybe, if she shows kindness to these men, her family will be protected from the same destruction.
She stands tall. She looks the King’s messenger dead in the eye. “Yes,” she says. “The men did come to me, but I didn’t know who they were or where they were from. I sent them away, and they left town right as dusk was falling. I didn’t see which direction they went. If you hurry, you might still be able to catch up with them.”
The lie comes easily, and her voice doesn’t shake.
She watches through her front window as the King’s messenger and his men pursue a ghost down the road and out of the city.
As soon as she loses sight of them, she runs up to the roof and signals to the spies that it’s safe for them to come out. They look at her with wide, questioning eyes, but still they do not speak.
“I know Yahweh has given you this land,” she tells them. “Everyone here is afraid of the Israelites and the terror of your God. I sent the King’s men away. Now you must swear to me by Yahweh, the God of heaven, that you will show me and my family the same kindness I’ve shown you. Promise me that when your people come to Jericho to wreak destruction as you have to the other cities, all of my family will be safe.”
Finally, for the first time since their arrival, one of the men speaks. He meets her eyes, which she finds strangely comforting. Most of the men who come to her can’t ever look directly at her out of their own shame.
“We will give our lives for yours,” he says. “If you keep quiet about our mission, we will protect your family from harm when Yahweh gives us this land.”
It should be terrifying, she thinks. To put her faith in a God of so much destruction. To put her trust in these men over her own people.
She asks herself the question again: Why am I doing this?
She doesn’t have a good answer. All she has is faith.
*
The story of Rahab is found in the book of Joshua, but it’s not the only place she makes an appearance. Skip forward a couple dozen books of the Bible and about 1,500 years, and you’ll find Rahab mentioned in the first chapter of Matthew, hidden among a long list of names: “Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab)” (1:5a NLT).
This is not just any genealogy. It’s the family line of Jesus. Matthew is laying out how we got from Abraham to the Messiah, and Rahab is on the list.
She saw what God had done to the other nations, and instead of letting it harden her heart into defiance like it did Jericho’s King, she turned to God for mercy. She put her faith in a God she didn’t know and hadn’t yet personally experienced, because she recognized His power and authority over the heavens and the earth, and then she recognized her own need for a savior. “For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below” (Joshua 2:11 NLT). Through this act of faith and humble obedience, Rahab was able to save herself and her family.
You may think that whatever you’ve done in the past or whoever you once were excludes you from being used by God for His purposes. You convince yourself that there’s someone better for the job, someone who hasn’t messed up as often as you have. But if God could use a prostitute from Jericho to help save the Israelite spies, if He could bring the Messiah into the world through her family line—then rest assured that God can use you, too.
And the beautiful thing about trusting God for our future is that we don’t have to have it all figured out. We don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes a little bit of pure faith is all God needs to accomplish amazing things through us.
