Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, plays an essential part in Israel’s successful conquest of Jericho. The Israelite Achan, a member of the prestigious tribe of Judah, is to blame for Israel’s subsequent failure to capture Ai.
Why is a Canaanite prostitute portrayed so positively while a prominent Israelite is depicted so negatively? Perhaps because a Canaanite doesn’t always act the way a Canaanite is expected to—and an Israelite doesn’t always behave the way an Israelite is expected to.
The stories of Rahab and Achan bracket the Book of Joshua’s account of the capture of Jericho, the first city to fall to the Israelites after they cross over the Jordan into Canaan. Rahab and Achan are not simply colorful bookends to the dramatic account of Jericho and its tumbling wall, however. Rather, their contrasting tales provide the framework for understanding the religious meaning of the conquest.
From the outset, the narrative indicates that these stories should be read together. These are the only episodes in all of Joshua that feature spies. In both accounts, Joshua sends out the spies with almost identical orders. Joshua 2:1 reads: “Then Joshua son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, ‘Go, view the land, especially Jericho.’ So they went, and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and spent the night there” (Joshua 2:1). Five chapters later, Joshua repeats his 026command. “Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai…and said to them, ‘Go up and spy out the land.’ And the men went up and spied out Ai” (Joshua 7:2).
But there is more than a structural connection between these stories: Rahab is not only the first Canaanite with whom Israel comes into contact, she is the quintessential Canaanite; Achan, as we shall see, is the quintessential Israelite.1 But each becomes the spiritual other.
Rahab’s role as Canaan incarnate is signaled immediately. Joshua barely gets out the order to spy out the land of Canaan, when his two men spy the prostitute Rahab and book lodging in her house.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the biblical narrative describing this encounter with the prostitute is redolent with sexual innuendo. But, as we shall see, the bawdy allusions do not simply re-create the atmosphere found in this house of prostitution. Nor are the allusions only crude attempts to spice up the plot. Instead, they help strengthen Rahab’s identity with Canaan and underscore the greatest threat Canaan presents to Israel: idol worship, or in biblical terms, “whoring after idols.”
Even Rahab’s name is suggestive. The Hebrew rhb means “broad.” As in English, the term can simply mean “wide” or “capacious.” But when applied to a prostitute, more risqué interpretations seem appropriate. The word “broad” can refer to a woman who is sexually experienced and perhaps socially marginal. In Ugaritic (a language related to Hebrew), the root refers to the female sex organs, suggesting that the subtle biblical allusion is a sexual allusion.
Rahab’s house (bet), in which the spies seek overnight accommodations, is hardly a private home. This is a house of ill-repute, or, to paraphrase the American cinematic tradition—“the best little whorehouse in Jericho!”2 Rahab was a zonah (plural, zonot), a prostitute. As head of the household, she may actually have been a madam.
The reference to the two men “spending the night” in Rahab’s establishment is almost certainly a double entendre. Hebrew sûkb connotes “to dwell,” “to spend the night,” “to stay,” “to sleep,” and this is how the phrase is usually translated. But sûkb also means “to sleep with,” “to be sexually intimate,” as in Genesis 19:32–35, in which each of Lot’s daughters “lies (sûkb) with her father.” Clearly, this is the desired sense here. In these circumstances, slumber is almost surely not the activity that “sûkb-ing” at a zonah’s house refers to.
In the following verses, the local Canaanite king learns that Israelite spies have entered his land: “The king of Jericho was told, ‘Some Israelites have come here tonight to search out the land.’ Then the king of Jericho sent orders to Rahab: ‘Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come only to search out the whole land’” (Joshua 2:2–3).3 Once again, this typical translation sanitizes the more ribald Hebrew original: The Hebrew phrase bw’ plus ’elayik (who have come to you) may also be translated as “who have entered you.” Thus, as one translator has suggested, the king orders Rahab: “Bring out the men who entered you…er, that is…who entered your house!”4
Rahab refuses to comply with the king’s crude request. She hides the two Israelite spies on her roof and sends the palace agents on a wild goose chase. “True, the men came to me [or entered me—returning the double entendre],” she tells the agents, “but I did not know where they came from. And when it was time to close the gate at dark, the men went out. Where the men went I do not know. Pursue them quickly, for you can overtake them” (Joshua 2:4–5). The stupidity of the agents is highlighted here, for they rush out to find the spies even though they have no idea in which direction they fled.
That night, after the Canaanite agents have departed, Rahab begs the Israelite spies on the roof to protect her and her family just as she has protected them:
I know that Yahweh [the Israelite God] has given you the land, and dread of you has fallen on us, and all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before you. For we have heard how Yahweh dried up the waters of the Yam Suph (Reed Sea)a before you when he brought you out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed [literally, put to the ban (hrm)]b…Yahweh your God is indeed God in heaven above and on the earth below.
Now then, since I have dealt kindly with you, swear to me by Yahweh that you in turn will deal kindly with my family. Give me a sign of good faith that you will spare my father and mother, my 028brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.
Joshua 2:9–13
The men agree to save Rahab: “Our life for yours” (Joshua 2:14), an action that involves a violation of Deuteronomy 20:10–18, in which God directs the Israelites to annihilate the men of the towns they conquer and to take the women and children only as booty. Rahab then helps the two spies leave the city by sneaking them out a window of her house (which is conveniently located in the city’s outer wall) and down a rope.
Even Rahab’s rope is suggestive. When first describing Rahab lowering the spies through the window, the text uses the Hebrew word hebel, meaning “rope.” But as the spies leave, they instruct Rahab to “tie this length of scarlet cord (tiqwah) in the window through which you lowered us [as a sign]” (Joshua 2:18). By this means, the Israelites will recognize Rahab’s house during the pending invasion and spare its occupants. Presumably the scarlet tiqwah belongs to Rahab (why would the spies have brought one along?). In any case, the cord is scarlet—a narrative detail that rivets our attention, especially when we know that scarlet carries both negative and erotic connotations in several passages in the Hebrew Bible.
In Canticles (Song of Songs) 4:3, the bride is said to have lips like a “scarlet thread.” When Tamar, who poses as a prostitute before Judah to get pregnant, finally gives birth to twins, the midwife uses a scarlet thread to mark the firstborn (Genesis 38:28, 30).c Jeremiah describes the desolate nation as a vain, painted lady, wearing a “scarlet dress” (Jeremiah 4:30). For the prophet Isaiah, scarlet represents wickedness: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow,” he promises (Isaiah 1:18).
The scarlet cord tied to Rahab’s window might signal the erotic and wicked nature of Rahab’s occupation. Might she live in Jericho’s seedy “red rope” district?5 The anomalous use of the word tiqwah—which usually means “hope,” as in modern Israel’s national anthem, “ha-Tiqwah”—for “cord” here may express her hope for customers.
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Rahab’s ploy saves the spies, who run to the hill country above Jericho (instead of the plain and river below the city, where they are being pursued) and hide out for three days, as she has recommended. When they finally return to camp, they inform Joshua of what they have learned. “Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands,” the spies report, using the very words the prostitute had used. “All the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before us” (Joshua 2:24).
Throughout her encounter with the spies, Rahab has presented herself as Canaan incarnate: She knows the king’s mind. She even seems to anticipate where the king’s men will search for the Israelite spies, so she sends the spies into the hills. She also knows the mind of the Canaanite people—including what they know about Israel and what they most fear. The Canaanite king appears to regard Rahab as representative of Canaan: When he hears that spies have been sent into Canaan, he assumes they are with the prostitute. Joshua, too, accepts her voice as the voice of Canaan. His plan to attack Jericho is based solely on what he has learned through her and, of course, through Yahweh.
The importance of Jericho to the conquest account is reflected in the amount of space the Book of Joshua devotes to the fall of this city. Six chapters (Joshua 2–7) describe the taking of Jericho (and the initial failure to take Ai). Only four chapters cover the rest of the conquest.6
Standing before the walls of the city, Joshua cries out, “Shout! for the Lord has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction [or, put to the ban (hrm)]” (Joshua 6:16–17). The Lord warns the Israelites: “Keep away from the things devoted to destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel an object for destruction [put Israel to the ban], bringing trouble upon it. But all the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the Lord; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord” (Joshua 6:18–19).
The trumpets blow, the Israelites shout, and the walls come tumbling down. Then the Israelites “devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys…They burned down the city and everything in it” (Joshua 6:21, 24).
The phrase “devoted to destruction” (literally “put to the ban [hrm]”), which is repeated throughout this passage, is not generally used to describe conventional military action but rather ritual destructions in which desecrated objects (and places and people) are removed from everyday use and eradicated. For sacred reasons, the city of Jericho, Joshua insists in 6:26, must never be rebuilt; the people and even their animals must be destroyed. Should the Israelites remove any of the objects slated for destruction, they will be similarly destroyed or “put to the ban.”
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Rahab alone is singled out for special treatment. Of all Jericho, only “Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her,” are spared by Joshua (Joshua 6:25). Clearly, Rahab has played an elevated role. So why is her story recorded in such low, bawdy language?
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, and especially in those books known as the Deuteronomic History,d idolatry is described as a kind of prostitution. In God’s last speech to Moses, the same Hebrew root znh that identifies Rahab as a prostitute (zonah) is used to describe idol worship:
And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold you are about to sleep with your fathers; then this people will rise and play the harlot (znh) after the strange gods of the land, where they go to be among them, and they will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured; and many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ And I will surely hide my face in that day on account of all the evil which they have done, because they have turned to other gods.”
Deuteronomy 31:16–18
This is the greatest threat to the Israelites in Canaan: idol worship, “playing harlot after the strange gods of the land.”
God’s prophecy is fulfilled. Throughout the Book of Judges, Israel persistently “whores” after the gods of Canaan (Judges 2:17). God calls up a series of judges to lead them, but as soon as any one judge dies, the backsliding Israelites return to their idolatrous ways (Judges 2:18–21). After Gideon’s death, for example, the Israelites “prostituted themselves with [the Canaanite deities] the Baals, making Baal-berith their god. The Israelites did not remember the Lord their God” (Judges 8:33; see also 8:27).
In the Book of Kings, the Phoenician-Canaanite princess Jezebel, who leads her husband King Ahab to worship her native deities Baal and Asherah (1 Kings 16:31), is accused of “whoredoms and sorceries” (2 Kings 9:22).e The prophets, too, use this sexual metaphor for idolatry—more than 30 times.7
Rahab represents this Canaanite threat. Her sexual promiscuity, which is emphasized by the bawdy allusions, is part of an extended metaphor in which sexual promiscuity equals religious promiscuity. When the spies “sleep” in Rahab’s house, they come dangerously close to succumbing to the temptation that will beset Israel all its days in Canaan: idolatry.
Some scholars have suggested that Rahab was not an ordinary prostitute or madam, but a “sacred prostitute” (qedesah). Such prostitutes were involved in ancient religious rites designed to induce fertility among the deities and thus ensure prosperity. This would make Rahab a faithful adherent of Canaanite religion rather than a run-of-the-mill whore. But there are two problems with this approach. First, there is no linguistic support whatsoever for this in the text—the term zonah is used consistently for Rahab’s occupation. Second, it is precisely Rahab’s description as the quintessential Canaanite, complete with the powerful sexual overtones, that makes her such a prominent counterpoint to Achan and makes her acceptance of Yahweh seem so astounding.
In the end, Rahab turns this sexual metaphor on its head. Instead of seducing and compromising the spies, she herself in effect becomes Israel and is devoted to Israel’s God. When she ascends to the roof where she has hidden the spies, she utters what amounts to a confession of faith (2:9–11, quoted above). Remarkably, her confession of faith reflects an insider’s knowledge of Israel as well as Canaan. Rahab knows that “Yahweh has given [Israel] the land.” She not only invokes the personal name of Israel’s God but is familiar with the divine promise of the land of Israel. Second, Rahab knows that “Yahweh dried up the waters of the Yam Suph (Reed Sea)” when “he brought [Israel] up out of Egypt.” Rahab is the only non-Israelite who ever refers to the Reed Sea. (The Philistines, for example, know about the plagues in Egypt but not about crossing the Reed Sea [1 Samuel 4:7–8].) Third, Rahab knows that the Israelites ritually destroyed the two Amorite kings Sihon and Og by “putting them to the ban (hrm).” Rahab is therefore aware that Israel’s takeover of Canaan cannot be described in ordinary military language but primarily in ritual terms.
Fourth, Rahab knows that “Yahweh your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.” The phrase “God in heaven above” is used by only three biblical figures: Moses, Solomon and Rahab. What a combination! The phrase “Yahweh your God is God” (hu elohim) is also unusual. It appears only three other times in the Hebrew Bible: in Jeremiah 10:10, where it is uttered by the prophet; in 2 Chronicles 20:6, where it is repeated by the righteous king Jehoshaphat; and in Psalm 100:3.
Fifth and finally, when Rahab presses the spies to pledge themselves to her and her family’s safety, she insists that they swear “by Yahweh” (Joshua 2:12). These very words are invariably spoken by Israelites and their ancestors starting with Abraham in Genesis 24:3.8
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Rahab’s confession of faith results in her being spared by Joshua and accepted into the house of Israel. “Her family has lived in Israel ever since. For she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho” (Joshua 6:25).
In a remarkable reversal, the quintessential Canaanite, whose very occupation epitomized Canaanitism from the Israelite perspective, has become an Israelite. The scarlet rope (tiqwah) that once hung in her window as a sign of her hope (tiqwah) for new customers comes to represent her hope for salvation as part of Israel.
If Rahab is the quintessential Canaanite who becomes part of Israel, Achan is the quintessential Israelite who betrays his people. Achan’s story picks up where Rahab’s ends, after the fall of Jericho. Joshua has vowed that the silver and gold and the bronze and iron vessels from Jericho should be deposited in the “treasury of the Lord.” He has warned the Israelites not to take any of the “things devoted to destruction” or they themselves will be devoted to destruction (Joshua 6:17–19). But Achan steals a “beautiful mantle from Shinar, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels,” which he secrets away beneath his tent (Joshua 7:21).
Joshua 7:1 describes his misdeed: “Now the Israelites violated the ban, for Achan son of Carmi son of Zabdi son of Zerah, belonging to the tribe of Judah, took some of the ban (hrm), and Yahweh became furious at the Israelites.” That Achan is representative of Israel is reinforced by this elaborate pedigree. In genealogical terms, Achan outshines even Joshua, who is identified merely as the “son of Nun.”9 The repetition of Achan’s genealogy in Joshua 7:18 only reinforces his role as representative of all Israelites.
As soon as Achan and his misdeed are introduced, Joshua sends out the second pair of spies, this time to scout out the city of Ai. These spies return immediately (no prostitutes delay them there) and inform Joshua that the Israelites will have little problem in taking the city. The city is so weakly defended that Joshua need not send all his troops.f
They are wrong. Joshua’s limited force is chased out of Ai. Thirty-six Israelites are killed in the battle. Now it is the Israelites, not the Canaanites, who live in fear: “And the hearts of [the Israelites] melted and turned to water” (Joshua 7:5).
Deeply distressed, Joshua asks Yahweh, “Why have you brought this people across the Jordan at all, to hand us over to the Amorites so as to destroy us?” (Joshua 7:7).
Yahweh informs Joshua that Israel must mend its ways if it is to escape destruction:
Israel has sinned! They also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them; they also took from the ban; they also robbed; they also acted deceptively when they placed [some of the banned booty] among their stuff. Therefore the Israelites are unable to stand before their enemies; they turn their backs to their enemies, because they have become a thing devoted for destruction themselves.
Joshua 7:11
Only one Israelite stole booty and hid it with his stuff: Achan. Yahweh equates Achan with Israel, however. Yahweh threatens that unless the Israelites get rid of the banned material, they too will be banned. This is tantamount to Yahweh telling Israel that they now have the status of the Canaanites, who have already been put to the ban and destroyed at Jericho (Joshua 6:21). If Israel (that is, Achan) acts like a Canaanite, Yahweh is saying, it will be treated like a Canaanite. The misdeeds of the quintessential Israelite threaten to transform his people into Canaanites. That is why they have lost the battle of Ai. That is why their hearts now melt with fear.
In order for Israel to be de-Canaanized, Achan and his house (equivalent to Rahab and her house in the Jericho story) must be eliminated from the community:
Then Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan son of Zerah, with the silver, the mantle, and the bar of gold, with his sons and daughters, with his oxen, donkeys, and sheep, and his tent, and all that he had; and they brought them up to the Valley of Achor.
Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord is bringing trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him to death; they burned them with fire, cast stones on them, and raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his burning anger. Therefore that place to this day is called the Valley of Achor (Valley of Trouble).
Joshua 7:24–26
The passage is a chilling echo of the destruction of Canaanite Jericho, in which the Israelites destroyed “all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys” (Joshua 6:21). Just as the Israelites burned down the Canaanite city and “everything in it” (Joshua 6:24), 054they now set fire to the “Canaanite” Achan and all that belonged to him.
Having made what amounts to a burnt offering to Yahweh, the Israelite troops are ready to return to Ai. Joshua leads all his fighting men in an elaborate ambush. This time, Joshua wins. “So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day” (Joshua 8:28).
“To this day,” Rahab’s family is part of Israel. “To this day,” Achan’s betrayal is memorialized with a heap of stones in the Valley of Trouble. Just as Rahab was not consigned to her Canaanite status, Achan did not benefit from his distinguished Israelite pedigree. Each became “the other.” In the Book of Joshua, the difference between Canaanite and Israelite is not simply ethnic but religious. The conquest of Canaan is not just a territorial victory but a sacred one: Canaan, like Rahab, becomes Israel.10
Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, plays an essential part in Israel’s successful conquest of Jericho. The Israelite Achan, a member of the prestigious tribe of Judah, is to blame for Israel’s subsequent failure to capture Ai. Why is a Canaanite prostitute portrayed so positively while a prominent Israelite is depicted so negatively? Perhaps because a Canaanite doesn’t always act the way a Canaanite is expected to—and an Israelite doesn’t always behave the way an Israelite is expected to. The stories of Rahab and Achan bracket the Book of Joshua’s account of the capture of Jericho, the first city to fall […]
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I use Canaanite in this context formulaically, since a variety of terms, sometimes occurring singly, sometimes in varying combinations, is employed to signify the inhabitants of the promised land. (See Genesis 10:15–18, 15:16, 18–21.)
2.
Both Jewish and Christian interpreters have famously attempted to sanitize this story by seeing Rahab’s establishment as an inn and Rahab as the innkeeper. See, for example, Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 5.1.2.
3.
Other sanitized translations include: “Produce the men who came to you and entered your house” (Jewish Publication Society); “Bring forth the men that have come to you, who entered your house” (Revised Standard Version); and “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house” (New International Version).
4.
Stanley Walters made this suggestion in an unpublished lecture.
5.
I am indebted to Lawrence Stager and Stanley Walters for this insight. See Frank Anthony Spina, “Rahab,” in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 4 vols., ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), vol. 4, pp. 33–34.
6.
Note the summary statement in Joshua 11:16–23. In the remainder of the book, there is a summary of the land taken and the kings defeated (Joshua 12), lists of the allotments of territory to various Israelite units and cities dedicated for special reasons or special personnel (12–21), a narrative featuring the conflict over the building of an altar by the Transjordanian Israelites (22), and, finally, the presentation of Joshua’s final sermons to Israel, including the narration’s summaries (23–24).
The exception is the Gibeonite episode (Joshua 9:18–19), which functions in parallel ways to the Rahab episode. In both cases, “Canaanite” outsiders become part of Israel, the former by expression of faith and the latter by a ruse.
9.
In all of Joshua, the only other pedigree this compelling belongs to Manasseh’s great-great-grandson Zelophehad (Joshua 17:3).
10.
This article, in a slightly different version, will constitute one of the chapters in a book I am writing, provisionally entitled The Faith of the Outsider. Each of the chapters treats a story in which a non-Israelite either becomes an Israelite (religiously speaking) or behaves in an Israelite manner. These stories demonstrate the complex and highly nuanced understanding of Israel’s divine election in the Hebrew Bible. The six stories are: Esau (Genesis 25–36); Tamar and Judah (Genesis 38); Rahab and Achan (Joshua 2; 7); Naaman (2 Kings 5); Jonah (Jonah); and Ruth (Ruth).
