_THE SPIES IN JERICHO._
JOSHUA ii.
It was not long ere Joshua found an occasion not only for the exercise
of that courage to which he had been so emphatically called both by
God and the people, but for calling on others to practise the same
manly virtue. For the duty which he laid on the two spies--detectives
we should now call them--to enter Jericho and bring a report of its
condition, was perhaps the most perilous to which it was possible for
men to be called. It was like sending them into a den of lions, and
expecting them to return safe and sound. Evidently he was happy in
finding two men ready for the duty and the risk. Young men they are
called further on (vi. 23), and it is quite likely that they were
leading men in their tribes. No doubt they might disguise themselves,
they might divest themselves of anything in dress that was
characteristically Hebrew, they might put on the clothes of
neighbouring peasants, and carry a basket of produce for sale in the
city; and as for language, they might be able to use the Canaanite
dialect and imitate the Canaanite accent. But if they did try any such
disguise, they must have known that it would be of doubtful efficacy;
the officials of Jericho could not fail to be keenly on the watch,
and no disguise could hide the Hebrew features, or divest them wholly
of the air of foreigners. Nevertheless the two men had courage for the
risky enterprise. Doubtless it was the courage that sprang from faith;
it was in God's service they went, and God's protection would not fail
them. To be able to find agents so willing and so suitable was a proof
to Joshua that God had already begun to fulfil His promises.
Joshua had been a spy himself, and it was natural enough that he
should think of the same mode of reconnoitring the country, now that
they were again on the eve of making the entrance into it which they
should have made nearly forty years before. There is no reason to
think that in taking this step Joshua acted presumptuously, proceeding
on his own counsel when he should have sought counsel of God. For
Joshua might rightly infer that he ought to take this course inasmuch
as it had been followed before with God's approval in the case of the
twelve. Its purpose was twofold--to obtain information and
confirmation. Information as to the actual condition and spirit of the
Canaanites, as to the view they took of the approaching invasion of
the Israelites, and the impression that had been made on them by all
the remarkable things that had happened in the desert; and
confirmation,--new proof for his own people that God was with them,
fresh encouragement to go up bravely to the attack, and fresh
assurance that not one word would ever fail them of all the things
which the Lord had promised.
We follow the two men as they leave Shittim, so named from the masses
of bright acacia which shed their glory over the plain; then cross the
river at "the fords," which, flooded though they were, were still
practicable for swimmers; enter the gates of Jericho, and move along
the streets. In such a city as Jericho, and among such an immoral
people as the Canaanites, it was not strange that they should fall in
with a woman of Rahab's occupation, and should receive an invitation
to her house. Some commentators have tried to make out that she was
not so bad as she is represented, but only an innkeeper; but the
meaning of the word both here and as translated in Heb. xi. and James
ii. is beyond contradiction. Others have supposed that she was one of
the harlot-priestesses of Ashtoreth, but in that case she would have
had her dwelling in the precincts of a temple, not in an
out-of-the-way place on the walls of the city. We are to remember that
in the degraded condition of public opinion in Canaan, as indeed much
later in the case of the Hetairai of Athens, her occupation was not
regarded as disgraceful, neither did it banish her from her family,
nor break up the bonds of interest and affection between them, as it
must do in every moral community.[6] It was not accompanied with that
self-contempt and self-loathing which in other circumstances are its
fruits. We may quite easily understand how the spies might enter her
house simply for the purpose of getting the information they desired,
as modern detectives when tracking out crime so often find it
necessary to win the confidence and worm out the secrets of members of
the same wretched class. But the emissaries of Joshua were in too
serious peril, in too devout a mood, and in too high-strung a state of
nerve to be at the mercy of any Delilah that might wish to lure them
to careless pleasure. Their faith, their honour, their patriotism, and
their regard to their leader Joshua, all demanded the extremest
circumspection and self-control; they were, like Peter, walking on the
sea; unless they kept their eye on their Divine protector, their
courage and presence of mind would fail them, they would be at the
mercy of their foes.
[6] It is somewhat remarkable that the present village of Riha, at
or near the site of the ancient Jericho, is noted for its
licentiousness. The men, it is said, wink at the infidelity of the
women, a trait of character singularly at variance with the
customs of the Bedouin. "At our encampment over 'Ain Terâbeh (says
Robinson) the night before we reached this place, we overheard our
Arabs asking the Khatib for a paper or written charm to protect
them from the women of Jericho; and from their conversation it
seemed that illicit intercourse between the latter and strangers
that come here is regarded as a matter of course. Strange that the
inhabitants of the valley should have retained this character from
the earliest ages; and that the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah should
still flourish upon the same accursed soil."--"Researches in
Palestine," i. 553.
Whether disguised or not, the two men had evidently been noticed and
suspected when they entered the city, which they seem to have done in
the dusk of evening. But, happily for them, the streets of Jericho
were not patrolled by policemen ready to pounce on suspicious persons,
and run them in for judicial examination. The king or burgomaster of
the place seems to have been the only person with whom it lay to deal
with them. Whoever had detected them, after following them to Rahab's
house, had then to resort to the king's residence and give their
information to him. Rahab had an inkling of what was likely to follow,
and being determined to save the men, she hid them on the roof of the
house, and covered them with stalks of flax, stored there for domestic
use. When, after some interval, the king's messengers came, commanding
her to bring them forth since they were Israelites come to search the
city, she was ready with her plausible tale. Two men had indeed come
to her, but she could not tell who they were,--it was no business of
hers to be inquisitive about them; the men had left just before the
gates were shut, and doubtless, if they were alert and pursued after
them, they would overtake them, for they could not be far off. The
king's messengers had not half the wit of the woman; they took her at
her word, made no search of her house, but set out on the wild-goose
chase on which she had sent them. Sense and spirit failed them alike.
We are not prepared for the remarkable development of her faith that
followed. This first Canaanite across the Jordan with whom the
Israelites met was no ordinary person. Rays of Divine light had
entered that unhallowed soul, not to be driven back, not to be hidden
under a bushel, but to be welcomed, and ultimately improved and
followed. Our minds are carried forward to what was so impressive in
the days of our Lord, when the publicans and the harlots entered into
the kingdom before the scribes and the pharisees. We are called to
admire the riches of the grace of God, who does not scorn the moral
leper, but many a time lays His hand upon him, and says "I will, be
thou clean." "They shall come from the east, and from the west, and
from the north, and from the south, and shall enter into the kingdom
of heaven; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer
darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
In the first place, Rahab made a most explicit confession of her
faith, not only in Jehovah as the God of the Hebrews, but in Him as
the one only God of heaven and earth. It would have been nothing had
she been willing to give to the Hebrew God a place, a high place, or
even the highest place among the gods. Her faith went much further.
"The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and in earth beneath."
This is an exclusive faith--Baal and Ashtoreth are nowhere. What a
remarkable conviction to take hold of such a mind! All the traditions
of her youth, all the opinions of her neighbours, all the terrors of
her priests set at nought, swept clean off the board, in face of the
overwhelming evidence of the sole Godhead of Jehovah!
Again, she explained the reason for this faith. "We have heard how the
Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you, when ye came out of
Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were
on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed."
The woman has had an eye to see and an ear to hear. She has not gazed
in stupid amazement on the marvellous tokens of Divine power displayed
before the world, nor accepted the sophistry of sceptics referring all
these marvels to accidental thunderstorms and earthquakes and high
winds. She knew better than to suppose that a nation of slaves by
their own resources could have eluded all the might of Pharaoh,
subsisted for forty years in the wilderness, and annihilated the
forces of such renowned potentates as Sihon and Og. She was no
philosopher, and could not have reasoned on the doctrine of causation,
but her common sense taught her that you cannot have extraordinary
effects without corresponding causes. It is one of the great
weaknesses of modern unbelief that with all its pretensions to
philosophy, it is constantly accepting effects without an adequate
cause. Jesus Christ, though He revolutionized the world, though He
founded an empire to which that of the Cæsars is not for a moment to
be compared, though all that were about Him admitted His supernatural
power and person, after all, was nothing but a man. The gospel that
has brought peace and joy to so many weary hearts, that has
transformed the slaves of sin into children of heaven, that has turned
cannibals into saints, and fashioned so many an angelic character out
of the rude blocks of humanity, is but a cunningly devised fable. What
contempt for such sophistries, such vain explanations of facts patent
to all would this poor woman have shown! How does she rebuke the many
that keep pottering in poor natural explanations of plain supernatural
facts, instead of manfully admitting that it is the Arm of God that
has been revealed, and the Voice of God that has spoken!
Further, Rahab informed the spies that when they heard these things
the inhabitants of the land had become faint, their hearts melted, and
there remained no more courage in them because of the Israelites. For
they felt that the tremendous Power that had desolated Egypt and dried
up the sea, that had crushed Sihon King of the Amorites and Og King of
Bashan like nuts under the feet of a giant, was now close upon
themselves. What could they do to arrest the march of such a power,
and avert the ruin which it was sure to inflict? They had neither
resource nor refuge--their hearts melted in them. It is when Divine
Power draws near to men, or when men draw near to Divine Power that
they get the right measure of its dimensions and the right sense of
their own impotence. Caligula could scoff at the gods at a distance,
but in any calamity no man was more prostrate with terror. It is easy
for the atheist or the agnostic to assume a bold front when God is far
off, but woe betide him when He draws near in war, in pestilence, or
in death!
If we ask, How could Rahab have such a faith and yet be a harlot? or
how could she have such faith in God and yet utter that tissue of
falsehoods about the spies with which she deluded the messengers of
the king? we answer that light comes but gradually and slowly to
persons like Rahab. The conscience is but gradually enlightened. How
many men have been slaveholders after they were Christians! Worse than
that, did not the godly John Newton, one of the two authors of the
Olney hymns, continue for some time in the slave trade, conveying
cargoes of his fellow-creatures stolen from their homes, before he
awoke to a sense of its infamy? Are there no persons among us calling
themselves Christians engaged in traffic that brings awful destruction
to the bodies and souls of their fellow-men? That Rahab should have
continued as she was after she threw in her lot with God's people is
inconceivable; but there can be no doubt how she was living when she
first comes into Bible history. And as to her falsehoods, though some
have excused lying when practised in order to save life, we do not
vindicate her on that ground. All falsehood, especially what is spoken
to those who have a right to trust us, must be offensive to the God of
truth, and the nearer men get to the Divine image, through the growing
closeness of their Divine fellowship, the more do they recoil from it.
Rahab was yet in the outermost circle of the Church, just touching the
boundary; the nearer she got to the centre the more would she recoil
alike from the foulness and the falseness of her early years.
We have to notice further in Rahab a determination to throw in her lot
with the people of God. In spirit she had ceased to be a Canaanite and
become an Israelite. She showed this by taking the side of the spies
against the king, and exposing herself to certain and awful
punishment if it had been found out that they were in her house. And
her confidential conversation with them before she sent them away, her
cordial recognition of their God, her expression of assurance that the
land would be theirs, and her request for the protection of herself
and her relations when the Israelites should become masters of
Jericho, all indicated one who desired to renounce the fellowship of
her own people and cast in her lot with the children of God. That she
was wholly blameless in the way in which she went about this, in
favouring the spies against her own nation in this underhand way, we
will not affirm; but one cannot look for a high sense of honour in
such a woman. Still, whatever may be said against her, the fact of her
remarkable faith remains conspicuous and beyond dispute, all the more
striking, too, that she is the last person in whom we should have
expected to find anything of the kind. That faith beyond doubt was
destined to expand and fructify in her heart, giving birth to virtues
and graces that made her after life a great contrast to what it had
been. No doubt the words of the Apostle might afterwards have been
applied to her--"Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by
the Spirit of the Lord."
And yet, though her faith may at this time have been but as a grain of
mustard seed, we see two effects of it that are not to be despised.
One was her protection of the Lord's people, as represented by the
spies; the other was her concern for her own relations. Father,
mother, brothers, and sisters and all that they had, were dear to her,
and she took measures for their safety when the destruction of Jericho
should come. She exacted an oath of the two spies, and asked a pledge
of them, that they would all be spared when the crisis of the city
arrived. And the men passed their oath and arranged for the protection
of the family. No doubt it may be said that it was only their temporal
welfare about which she expressed concern, and for which she made
provision. But what more could she have been expected to do at that
moment? What more could the two spies have engaged to secure? It was
plain enough that if they were ever to obtain further benefit from
fellowship with God's people, their lives must be preserved in the
first instance from the universal destruction which was impending. Her
anxiety for her family, like her anxiety for herself, may even then
have begun to extend beyond things seen and temporal, and a fair
vision of peace and joy may have begun to flit across her fancy at the
thought of the vile and degrading idolatry of the Canaanites being
displaced in them by the service of a God of holiness and of love. But
neither was she far enough advanced to be able as yet to give
expression to this hope, nor were the spies the persons to whom it
would naturally have been communicated. The usual order in the
Christian life is, that as anxiety about ourselves begins in a sense
of personal danger and a desire for deliverance therefrom, so
spiritual anxiety about the objects of our affection has usually the
same beginning. But as it would be a miserable thing for the new life
to stand still as soon as our personal safety was secured, so it would
be a wretched affection that sought nothing more on behalf of our
dearest friends. When, by accepting Christ, we get the blessing of
personal safety, we only reach a height from which we see how many
other things we need. We become ashamed of our unholy passions, our
selfish hearts, our godless ways, and we aspire, with an ardour which
the world cannot understand, to purity and unselfishness and
consecration to God. For our friends we desire the same; we feel for
them as for ourselves, that the bondage and pollution of sin are
degrading, and that there can be neither peace, nor happiness, nor
real dignity for the soul until it is created anew after the image of
God.
Some commentators have laid considerable stress on the line of scarlet
thread that was to be displayed in the window by which the spies had
been let down, as a token and remembrance that that house was to be
spared when the victorious army should enter Jericho. In that scarlet
thread they have seen an emblem of atonement, an emblem of the blood
of Christ by which sinners are redeemed. To us it seems more likely
that, in fixing on this as the pledge of safety, the spies had in view
the blood sprinkled on the lintels and door posts of the Hebrew houses
in Egypt by which the destroying angel was guided to pass them by. The
scarlet rope had some resemblance to blood, and for this reason its
special purpose might be more readily apprehended. Obviously the spies
had no time to go into elaborate explanations at the moment. It is to
be observed that, as the window looked to the outside of the city, the
cord would be observed by the Israelites and the house recognised as
they marched round and round, according to the instructions of Joshua.
Not a man of all the host but would see it again and again, as they
performed their singular march, and would mark the position of the
house so carefully that its inmates, gathered together like the family
of Noah in the ark, would be preserved in perfect safety.
The stratagem of Rahab, and the mode of flight which she recommended
to the spies, fruits of woman's ready wit and intuitive judgment,
were both successful. She reminds us of the self-possession of Jael,
or of Abigail, the wife of Nabal. In the dark, the spies escaped to
the mountain,--the rugged rampart which bounded the valley of the
Jordan on the west. Hiding in its sequestered crevices for three days,
till the pursuit of the Jerichonians was over, they stole out under
cover of darkness, recrossed the Jordan, told Joshua of their stirring
and strange adventure, and wound up with the remark that the hearts of
the people of the country were melting because of them. How often is
this true, though unbelief cannot see it! When Jesus told His
disciples that He beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven, He
taught us that those who set themselves against Him and His cause are
fallen powers, no longer flushed with victory and hope, but defeated
and dejected, and consciously unable to overcome the heaven-aided
forces that are against them. Well for all Christian philanthropists
and missionaries of the Cross, and brave assailants of lust and greed
and vice and error, to bear this in mind! The cause of darkness never
can triumph in the end, it has no power to rally and rush against the
truth; if only the servants of Christ would be strong and of a good
courage, they too would find that the boldest champions of the world
do faint because of them.
When the spies return to Joshua and tell him all that has befallen
them, he accepts their adventure as a token for good. They have not
given him any hint how Jericho is to be taken; but, what is better,
they have shown him that the outstretched arm of God has been seen by
the heathen, and that the inhabitants of the country are paralysed on
account of it. The two spies were a great contrast to the ten that
accompanied Joshua and Caleb so long before: the ten declared the
land unassailable; the two looked on it as already conquered--"The
Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land." Children of Israel,
you must not be outdone in faith by a harlot; believe that God is with
you, go up, and possess the land!