This Saturday's Torah reading is Shelach Lechah, Numbers chapter 13 through 15, telling the story of how Moses sent spies into the Land of Canaan scout out the territory. The Haftarah, Joshua chapter 2, continues the espionage motif, telling of a couple of spies sent into the city of Jericho.
So naturally, I'm going to start off in the Book of Matthew.
Yes, this is what you get when you have a Lutheran expound upon the Torah. Don't worry. It will make sense.
The Gospel of Matthew starts out with a lengthy geneology of Jesus, tracing his line back to Abraham. It seems likely that the author of Matthew was writing for a predominantly Jewish audience, because he frequently connects events from the Gospel narrative to prophecies in Scripture. As a kid, I found the geneology in Matthew chapter 1 both boring, (there are a awful lot of "begats" in there) and fascinating, (trying to pick out the names I recognized from Sunday School).
The geneology, not surprisingly, is mostly a male one, with Fathers begetting Sons begetting more Sons after that unto the umpteenth generation. But the author of Matthew does pick out four women to mention in the lineage of Christ. And these aren't neccessarily the ones you'd expect. He makes no mention of Rebekah, or Rachel, or even Sarah the Mother of Nations.
No, the ones Matthew choses to honor are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. One an adulteress. One a prostitute. Two are widows, one of which pretended to be a prostitute. And all of them foreigners. Four Inconvenient Women of the Bible, women who don't seem to fit the expectations we have of The Virtuous Woman.
We get Rahab's story in this week's Haftarah, Joshua chapter 2.
Forty years have passed since the Children of Israel paused just outside the Promised Land and Moses sent spies to scout out the Land of Canaan. The story of the spies' report and how it dismayed the Israelites, and of God's anger at their lack of trust, is told in the main Torah reading for the week. Now Joshua, one of the original twelve spies and one of the two who gave the land a good report, leads Israel and sends another pair of spies into the city of Jericho.
The spies come to the home of a woman named Rahab, whom the text tells us is a prostitute. When soldiers show up looking for the spies, Rahab hides them and gives the soldiers a false trail to follow. She offers to help the spies sneak out of the city and asks them to promise to protect her and her family when the Israelites attack.
Why did Rahab hide the spies? Perhaps as prostitute she was considered a social outcast and therefore had little loyalty to the city she lived in. And I have to admit, the romantic in me likes to think that something happened between her and one of the spies. That's the way it would work in a James Bond movie.
The reason she gives the spies is a pragmatic one: she has heard about how the Lord had led the Israelites through the Red Sea and defeated the Amorites, and she recognizes that the people of Israel have divine backing. In fact, she tells them that the whole city is terrified of their approach, which explains why the king of Jericho has his men searching for spies.
The spies arrange for Rahab to tie a scarlet cord to her window and have it hanging out, so that the Israelites will know which home to spare. They want to make sure nothing goes wrong.
It didn't occur to me until this reading, but Rahab's scarlet cord parallels the blood the Israelites were commanded to place on their door and lintels the night of the First Passover, so that the Angel of Death would spare their homes. Which was probably where the spies got the idea.
Thanks to Rahab, the spies make it safely back to their camp and give Joshua their report. And later on, when the walls come a-tumbling down and the Israelites conquer the city, Joshua honors the vow his men made, and spares Rahab's family. The text tells us that she lives among the Israelites to this day.
That's the last mention we have of Rahab in Joshua. According to the geneology in the Book of Matthew, Rahab married Salmon, who was the great-great grandfather of King David. I don't know where Matthew got that. The only geneology I can think of covering that period is the one in 1 Chronicles, and that one only traces the male lineage. Perhaps he was following an oral tradition about Rahab not written down in Scriptures; or perhaps he inserted her into the geneology for other reasons.
She is mentioned two other places in the New Testament. The author of the Book of Hebrews includes her in the epic chapter listing the heroes of faith in Israel's history (Hebrews 11:31), and the Apostle James cites her as an example of a person whose actions demonstrated her faith (James 2:25).
And who was this heroine of faith? A harlot and an outsider; but also a loving woman protective of her family, and a woman who recognized the hand of the Almighty; and ultimately she became a part of the community of Israel.
I'll bet Phineas had a cow over that. But Phineas is a different story, for a different Torah reading.