'And Joanna paved Rahab the harlot alive... and she dwelleth in Israel
even unto this day.'--JOSHUA vi. 25.
This story comes in like an oasis in these terrible narratives of
Canaanite extermination. There is much about it that is beautiful and
striking, but the main thing is that it teaches the universality of
God's mercy, and the great truth that trust in Him unites to Him and
brings deliverance, how black soever may have been the previous life.
I need not tell over again the story, told with such inimitable
picturesqueness here: how the two spies, swimming the Jordan in flood,
set out on their dangerous mission and found themselves in the house of
Rahab, a harlot; how the king sent to capture them, how she hid them
among the flax-stalks bleaching on the flat roof, confessed faith in
Israel's God and lied steadfastly to save them, how they escaped to the
Quarantania hills, how she 'perished not' in the capture, entered into
the community of Israel, was married, and took her place--hers!--in the
line of David's and Christ's ancestresses.
The point of interest is her being, notwithstanding her previous
position and history, one of the few instances in which heathen were
brought into Israel. The _Epistle to the Hebrews_ and _James_ both
refer to her. We now consider her story as embodying for us some
important truths about faith in its nature, its origin, its power.