Rahab and the Questions She Poses

Rahab
Ancestor of Jesus
Woman of mystery
protector and provider
for family and foe.
Tell us your story.

Rahab
keeper of the Inn
in the walls
listens to the news
from travelers
watches the ways
of the world
knows what she
must do
acts to preserve
her family --

-- Ann Fontaine, Streams of Mercy

Rahab is a woman of great interest to me. The story in Joshua indicates that she was a prostitute, hid some Israelite spies, confessed her faith in God, helped them escape and, as reward, her request that she and her family be rescued when the army took Jericho was granted. It's an interesting story with just enough detail to make it a good tale and yet there's a lot that is left to the imagination -- or the translation.

Was she really the harlot the scripture labels her? She had a house, one built beside and partially incorporated into the city walls, but was it a house or was it a "house"? There's no husband in sight, so was she an "independent contractor"? Was she a widow? Her story indicates she had a father, so why was she not in his house, under his roof, being sheltered and taken care of by her parent or even one of her brothers? Why was she a prostitute, if she was really one and not just labeled that way because a "good" girl would have been under some man's roof and protection, if not a husband's then a father's or brother's? Was she a temple prostitute? Or was she just another victim of gender profiling?

The house fascinates me. It was described as " ... her house was on the outer side of the city wall and she resided within the wall itself." Interesting. Somehow I picture a box stuck onto a wall with a window cut in it. There's one problem with that --- the window would have been fairly close to the ground and not really something conducive to the invulnerability of the wall. After all, if someone could get OUT of the window and reach the ground without much difficulty, it would be only a bit more difficult for someone to get IN the same way. Archaeology has discovered that Jericho's walls did, in fact, have houses that abutted the outer of two walls, and that part of the wall did not "tumble down" as the rest of the wall did. Could one of the shells of brick that remains be Rahab's own house?

Rahab had flax drying on her rooftop. Why? was it the custom for all households to purchase harvested flax and then do the manual work of stripping, cleaning, spinning and weaving (or twisting) it into whatever the family needed? There was rope made of flax, so was Rahab a rope-maker? Did she also spin and weave? Did she twist the rope that let down the spies? Did she twist and then dye the red thread that was the signal to spare her house?

Then there is that red cord. It seems so full of meaning over and above it's simple being as a piece of twisted something, probably flax, dyed red. Did it resemble a sort of umbilical cord between Rahab and her former life that was severed when she first acknowledged the God of Israel as a god of power over and above anything her own religion could match? Did it symbolize her rebirth as a "righteous" woman? Why red? Was it a red cord that acted like the scarlet letter in Puritan times used to mark an adulteress or notorious sinner? Red for shame? Red for the blood of martyrs, one of whom might have been Rahab had she been caught helping the Israelites? Red for an ordination of Rahab into the community of faith? Red for the birth-blood of her offspring who would eventually, many generations later, culminate in the birth of a seemingly innocent babe who would shake the foundations of the world as the earthquake shook Rahab's home and helped to tumble its walls?

Rahab, you have left me so many questions, questions I can't answer. Yet you have also left me with an image and a presence of you as a woman, courageous, smart, quick-thinking, resourceful and trusting in a God and a people you had only heard about.

Rahab, you stood behind the city walls and spoke your confession of faith to the spies -- and to the wind. You were heard and saved for greater things.

Rahab, if my blog has a patron saint, you're it.