Jay: To put the story of Rahab in context, note that Joshua had been sweeping unopposed through the Promised Land, wiping out whole communities and cities, before he ever got to Rahab’s home town of Jericho. He sent inept spies into Jericho ahead of his attack, but they were immediately detected and hunted. Rahab hid them, lied to their pursuers, and devised their escape, in return for a safe pass for her and her family when Joshua ransacked the city.
Jericho was a well-fortified city. Rahab believed it would fall nevertheless, based on (1) Joshua’s track record of obliterating all in his path and (2) on the evidence that Joshua’s God was so powerful that He had been able to part the Red Sea. Her plea bargain was accepted, and her safe pass consisted of a red cord which she was to hang from her window. The cord would tell Joshua’s troops to leave her house and the people within it unmolested. Joshua did indeed devastate the city, killing everyone in it except Rahab and her family.
Rahab is featured in the faith hall of fame alongside: Abel, who by faith offered a sacrifice; Enoch, who by faith was taken up into heaven; Abraham, who by faith left his homeland to go retrieve his inheritance from the Lord; Sarah, who by faith was able to conceive at a very old age; Abraham, who by faith was willing to offer to sacrifice his son Isaac; Isaac, who by faith blessed his sons Esau and Jacob; by faith, Jacob blessed the sons of Joseph; Moses was hidden by faith by his parents, by faith chose the people of Israel over the sons of Pharaoh, by faith led the exodus out of Egypt, by faith kept the Passover before the exodus, and by faith caused the parting of the Red Sea; and then comes a clump of well-known Biblical characters—Gideon, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel—who by faith achieved various things. The final group consists of faceless people who have by faith been persecuted and tortured in the most gruesome ways:
Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. (Hebrews 11:35-38)
Is the story of Rahab about faith, or is it about self-preservation? Why is Rahab in the faith hall of fame? And what did she and the other faith hall-of-famers not get that was promised? Compare and contrast this:
“Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen.” (Matthew 21:21)
…with this:
And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40)
What does all this tell us about faith?
Anonymous: To me, the statement about not receiving what was promised means that if we are persecuted, and have as much faith as those in the faith hall of fame who were persecuted, then we will receive what they received. We too will be in the hall of fame. We too will be made perfect, like them. The promise is to those of us who are persecuted, especially in the last days, to encourage us to retain our faith.
Donald: I don’t see self-preservation as faith.
Jay: If so, and if Rahab’s story is about self-preservation, then why is she in the faith hall of fame? Or could we assert that since Rahab is in the faith hall of fame, her story must be about faith?
David: The Bible is sometimes a book of plain speaking. In plain English, the story of Rahab is plain and simply a story of self- and family-preservation. Why then she is in the faith hall of fame is a mystery. But then, the Bible is also a book of questions. By means of such apparent anomalies, it forces us to delve beyond the plain language of Scripture and into the issues that arise when we do that. If Rahab’s story is about faith, it troubles me that she references “your” God. There is no question that when she does that, she has no faith in God. Maybe she believes in no God, or a different god, or in a pantheon of gods. In any of these cases, she is unfaithful to the one true God.
Don: If the story of Rahab seems troubling, wait until we get to Gideon and the rest of the faith hall-of-famers! They force us to consider where the faith in their stories resides: Is it in them, the individuals; or in something external to them? One interpretation of the mustard seed metaphor from the fig tree story is that we might not, ever, have as much as a mustard seed of faith, so can never hope to move a mountain or wither a fig tree. Perhaps the faith chapter is intended to illustrate that Rahab et al. have appropriated faith from God, that faith does not reside within them—or us. Apart from Enoch and Abel, the hall-of-famers are riddled with doubt. There can be no sanitizing of that.
David: There is also an issue about what they had faith in. It seems to me they had faith in a God of magic, on the basis that magic was indeed the desired and the actual product of their faith! But the message I get from the Gospels and the teaching of Jesus is that God is emphatically not a God of magic. So to suggest, as the faith chapter appears to do, that we should have faith in a God of magic, is deeply disturbing.
Robin: Rahab was a prostitute, of no standing even among her clients and certainly not among Joshua’s spies, who were from a different culture even. Her approach to them for help shows that her tiny bit of faith, exhibited in her recognizing the God who split the Red Sea, was valued by God.
Jay: Would Rahab be in the hall of fame if the spies had not shown up?
David: We all have inborn faith. It will arise sooner or later. If the spies had not shown up and Rahab ended up being slaughtered alongside her family, it would have arisen at that last moment. But it would not have been faith in magic. It would have been faith in the ultimate blessing of God, the blessing promised by Jesus, in the Beatitudes, to all the oppressed and persecuted.
Donna: Or was it to indicate that this was her time for salvation? We all come to salvation in different ways; this happened to be her way.
Don: Metaphorically, the argument might indeed be made that the spies represented God’s grace, sent specifically in this case to save Rahab at this moment. In many Scriptural stories, such as Jonah, we see God sending some agent of faith, mercy, or forgiveness. This was Rahab’s moment, but He gives all of us our moment, too, to decide for God. There’s no question that she made a blatant self-preservation decision, but that is not unnatural and not unholy. It is not our righteousness nor our faith that is in question: It is God who is the author and finisher of our faith. This is a powerful statement with the powerful implication that there is not much we can do to perfect it ourselves.
David: But a faith that God will save one’s mortal being is self-centered. Scripture (to me) makes it plain that God’s will will be done, no matter what. But Rahab should not have been praying to be saved from Joshua. She should have prayed that God’s will be done. But she did not.
Don: If she had felt that, her response would have been not to hide the spies but to reveal them to the king’s agents and let God’s will be done.
Donald: We personalize God and make Him internal to us. This contrasts with the externalized God that seems to be operative in these stories.
Dave: Does God send us his grace in some form, as He did with Rahab, but we miss seeing for what it is? Rahab had faith and was open to God’s agent?
Don: I think so, and in ways so varied that we cannot hope to anticipate its arrival. It may not be a one-time event—it might occur multiple times. Sometimes it’s a dramatic event, as with Paul, struck blind by lightning on the road to Damascus; sometimes it’s undramatic, as with the still, small voice that spoke to Elijah. But it may be easy to miss or mistake the agent of grace.
Kiran: Joshua’s army spent 40 years living in the desert. It must have been a hard life. Their survival had to be supernatural. The people of Jericho must have noticed this.
David: Imagine a prostitute in Raqqa, anticipating the arrival of Islamic State fighters, helping their spies in return for sparing her life later. From her relatively ignorant perspective, IS lives in the desert with little visible means of support. It claims, and indeed it seems to her, to have a powerful God on its side. And for quite a number of years it has been unstoppable. What is she to conclude? What is she to do? Is there any difference between IS and Joshua’s army? Is there any difference between the God of IS and the God of Joshua?
Don: The parallel is even stronger in 9/11. It was ludicrous that three people with minimal training could precision pilot three airplanes to their targets, but that only served as evidence to the terrorists that God was on their side, that their plan would be ludicrous if it did not have supernatural support from God. Is it misguided to look to the supernatural as evidence of faith?
David: That is the faith of Rahab—in a God of the supernatural, a God who parted the Red Sea and was helping Joshua’s army to live supernaturally in the desert and sweep all before him in battle. But Jesus plainly warned against this type of faith in a God of magic, so why Rahab was chosen for the faith hall of fame is inexplicable, it seems to me.
Donald: What’s the difference between miracles and magic?
Donna: Miracles are made by God; magic is Man-made.
David: God can perform miracles, but Man cannot command and control God’s performance of them. By a God of magic, I mean a God who can perform miracles on request, through prayer.
Donald: But different people might view things as miracle or magic depending on their viewpoint.
Chris: For the Israelites, the parting of the Red Sea was deliverance from slavery. That main aspect of the miracle might not have been what was commonly transmitted—instead, the wow factor of the parting of the waters was the really interesting bit. Rahab needed deliverance. Perhaps she was aware of the significance of the parting of the Red Sea. Deliverance is an attribute of God. Things we don’t understand we often ascribe to God. Perhaps we are all looking for the deliverance Rahab was looking for and we will turn to the supernatural for it if that seems to be its source.
Donna: Former drug addicts and dealers have been saved and become, for example, great pastors. Rahab’s story also shows us that God uses “the least of these”, and we don’t know what happens next with her. What happens next is really what matters.
Don: We know that she married an Israelite and was a forerunner in the line of Jesus. But it is remarkable that the condition for her deliverance was not what she did for the spies, but the hanging of the scarlet cord from the window. Even if she helped the spies escape successfully, she would not be saved if she failed to hang the cord. The cord that stretches from heaven to earth—the cord that is the blood of Jesus dripping down from the cross. It is unmistakably the symbol of her deliverance. Without it, all her other actions are null and void.
Anonymous: That’s when faith turns to action. Without action, faith is dead.
Jay: Does faith come from God—the “author and finisher” of our faith—or from whatever we can generate in ourselves? In Matthew 21 is Jesus challenging us to strengthen our faith or is he saying we must rely solely on God for whatever faith we are allotted, and our allotment will never be enough to move a mountain? Is Rahab more about the offering of deliverance, of salvation, from God, or is it more about Rahab’s actions? The blatant self-preservation is confusing us. Is membership in the faith hall of fame not about the members’ actions at all, about what they did or why they did it, but rather about what God did through them, with them, for them. Is our faith our responsibility or God’s? A bit of both? Whose job is faith? And is faith dependent on my actions?
Kiran: Why is self-preservation wrong? God wanted to preserve Adam and Eve, so preservation is a good thing. Is it only selfish preservation that is wrong, while unselfishly preserving others is right? Most of us come to religion for self-preservation after death. It would be noble to come to it for the sake of others, but it is hard to see anyone doing that.
Jay: If Rahab had bargained for the salvation of the city of Jericho and all its inhabitants, it would indeed be a different story!
David: All she had to do was cut her scarlet cord into small pieces and give a piece to all her neighbors. She could have—should have!—shared the grace God gave her. But she didn’t.
Jay: It would be an easier story for us to understand if she had.
David: Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes to the oppressed and persecuted are not about the affected individuals as much as they are about the acceptance that God’s will will be done, and that when it is, and when we do, we will be blessed and we will be saved and delivered from our misery. Perhaps the Rahab story is intended to show us that Rahab really was such a person, in total despair at what seemed like impending doom for her and her family, at the end of her tether. She had seen what Joshua (who might as well have been Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) was capable of and in her moment of utter despair she reached out to God. I don’t know. In trying to interpret the deep meaning of Scripture we indulge in “spinning” it. It’s a dangerous thing to do. I’d prefer the Bible to be more a book of clear and unequivocal answers! 🙂
Dave: Why did the nameless oppressed people in the faith hall of fame not receive the promise?
Jay: They are certainly reminiscent of the oppressed in the Beatitudes.
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