From Exodus to Joshua

As we travel through the Old Testament we’ve seen a mighty and powerful God rescue enslaved Israel from superpower Egypt. Pharaoh was the leader of a world class power and had an ego to match and against this force God comes roaring out to show Egypt and the world that he is the Lord of heaven and earth.

After the Exodus we descend into the desert wanderings. God will at times, like with Sinai and and other episode show himself this God of Biblical proportions, but so much of the relationship and conversation gets personal, moral and legal. Do this, don’t do that, trust… the second phase is really an exploration of character in a difficult yet intimate relationship. Will God cut and run while Israel proves to be fickle and unfaithful? God doesn’t.

Moses is now dead and a new, untested leader Joshua is at the helm. It was at this point 40 years before that Israel’s failure of nerve brought the 40 years of wandering in the desert. What will happen this time? God tells Joshua and the people to be bold and courageous because God will take the land for them and install them in it. Their part is to be faithful to him, something they’ve not shown themselves very capable of.

From Pharaoh to a Jericho

The first scene of this new chapter in the story is so different from the last one. Moses who was raised in the courts of power has personal confrontations with Pharaoh, the god-man of Egypt. This new chapter begins with spies sneaking into fortress Jericho.

For some of us we might have to do some recalibration on our imaginations of Jericho. Our best information to date shows Jericho not as a “city” as we imagine it, a population center with culture and life, but more of a frontier fort where a local ruler who is an agent of a much larger power someplace else tries to monitor and control who comes and goes by the vital trade route. People with homes and children lived in villages that likely dotted the area, but Jericho was a fort, probably a few hundred soldiers, some traders, and of course some merchants who are dealing in the kinds of commerce servicing frontier places.

Canaan as the Old West

Canaan, as it is called in the Bible, was called that by the Egyptians. Canaan was for Empire Egypt what we might call a “buffer state”. When Egypt was strong it would project it’s power into Canaan to dominate the peoples there and the vital trade routes that went through it. When Egypt was weak it would lose its grasp on the region and the “natives” would gain power and exert control over their own fortunes. The same was true of the region for the great Mesopotamian empires to the north of Canaan. It functioned similarly for them. Egypt and the powers to the north of Canaan in their grasping for dominance would often fight over Canaan. What this created in the middle were various smaller city-states and regions who would become adapt at opportunism. Canaan was for Egypt the Wild East and for Mesopotamia the Wild South.

This is the land that God promises to Israel and he promises to deliver it to her, not to Egypt, not to Assyria or Babylon, but to her.

Israel, however, sees herself as weak. It was God who rescued her from Egypt and even before the Wild East of Canaan she saw herself as grasshoppers. She couldn’t tangle with these experienced locals in their walled fortifications. This was why 40 years before she turned tail and ran to whine and die in the desert.

Rahab the Prostitute/Innkeeper

Here in the story we go from power meetings in the palace to covert meetings on the saloon.

Scholars will note what actually seems reasonable if we imagine Jericho as a frontier foot who Rahab is and what she does. A bit of sleuthing about the underside of frontier life reveals why we call it the world’s oldest profession. In a space where law is sketchy and dominant powers come and go people find a way to survive in brutal and difficult ways.

This website gives brief vignettes of “6 Wild Women of the Wild West” Their stories have elements that are common and elements that are extraordinary. Sometimes in desperate times these women became prostitutes. Prostitution is most often an occupation of desperation, it is for people who have few options. Many of these “wild women” through their savvy and wits managed to climb out of a difficult situation and carve out a little space for themselves. Rahab might have been just such a woman.

Rahab the Opportunist

What we know of Rahab is that she was likely at the nexus point of rumors in the land. The fort where she maintained her establishment was where merchants and soldiers came looking for food, drink, rest and a sexual release would also let down their guard and speak their minds. She knew the scuttlebutt and what she knew was that the LORD had unnerved the population. While Israel was afraid naturally Canaan was afraid supernaturally. The reputation of Yhwh as beating Pharaoh had reached the land, and the victories against border kingdoms had enhanced the reputation. Rahab could feel the windows of opportunity shifting in this land where picking out the future overlord was a matter of life and death.

What little documentation of prostitute/innkeepers we have in such places that remains comes to us through Hammurabi’s famous code from the north. It amazingly almost seems to speak to this situation precisely.

“If there should be a woman innkeeper in whose house criminals congregate, and she does not seize those criminals and lead them off to the palace authorities, that woman innkeeper shall be put to death.

Walton, J. H. (2009). Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 19). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Rahab when the strangers come has to do some instant calculation. If she fails to turn over the strangers and Israel fails to take the land, she dies. If she turns over the strangers and God does take the land, she dies. What does she do? She banks on God and she bargains with the spies to save her family.

Joshua 2:8–13 (NIV)

⁸ Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof ⁹ and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. ¹⁰ We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. ¹¹ When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. ¹² “Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign ¹³ that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them—and that you will save us from death.”

The spies agree. The signal will be the red cord. Now if the red cord were an unusual thing she would be giving herself away. The cord was likely the usual thing, maybe to mark the inn for travelers to know they could get some food, drink and sex there. Maybe the red cord was the Jericho equivalent of the red light.

Rahab’s Gamble Pays Off

If we imagine Rahab as some wild west madam who has worked her way up from the bottom, now wagering everything on Yhwh I think we’re probably not far off. Rahab in Matthew’s genealogy becomes an heir of Christ.

Rahab shows us the radical openness of God to our need and even our ambition. For most of us pride and ambition are serious impediments to becoming disciples of Jesus, but Rahab is a woman who had through her life perhaps always made the best of bad situations through her courage, luck and opportunism. She didn’t join Israel because they were moral, she joined them because she strangely believed the promises of God better than Israel herself did. Rahab was willing to wager all that she had on what seemed in the moment to be a high stakes rumor and God credited it to her as faith.

Rahab and Parables of Jesus

Jesus will later tell some parables that I think speak of Rahab.

Matthew 13:44–45 (NIV)

⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. ⁴⁵ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.

Rahab invites us to at times be ruthlessly opportunistic in better on God. God seems to welcome this as faith and we should value it as such.