Rahab and the Scarlet Cord

When James wants to prove that real faith shows itself in action, he reaches for two examples. One is Abraham, which everyone expected. The other is Rahab, a prostitute in a Canaanite city, which no one expected. Her story is told in Joshua chapter two, and it is worth retelling, because James saw something in it that we can miss.

Israel was camped east of the Jordan, and Joshua sent two men to look over the land, and especially Jericho. They came to the house of a woman named Rahab and stayed there. Someone noticed, and the king of Jericho sent word to Rahab to bring the men out. Rahab had already hidden them on her roof under stalks of flax. She told the king's messengers that the men had come and gone, that she did not know where they were headed, and that if they hurried they might catch them. The messengers left in pursuit toward the fords, and the gate was shut behind them.

Then Rahab went up to the roof and said something remarkable. She told the spies that she knew the Lord had given them the land, that the whole city was melting in fear, that they had heard how the Lord dried up the Red Sea and what Israel had done to the kings east of the Jordan. And then she said that the Lord their God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. A woman in a pagan city, with no Scripture and no priest, confessed the God of Israel more clearly than many in Israel had.

She asked for a sign of good faith. Spare my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them. The spies agreed, on condition that she tie a scarlet cord in the window through which she let them down, that she gather her family inside, and that she keep their mission secret. She let them down by a rope through the window, because her house was built into the city wall, and she sent them to the hills for three days until the pursuers gave up. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

When Jericho fell, Joshua kept the promise. Rahab and her family were brought out alive and lived among the Israelites. Matthew's genealogy lists her as the mother of Boaz, which makes her an ancestor of David and of Jesus. Hebrews eleven names her among the faithful. And James, in the passage this week's reading brings us to, says she was considered righteous for what she did when she received the spies and sent them off another way.

What did James see? He saw that Rahab's faith was not a private opinion. She believed that the Lord was God, and belief drove her to act, at enormous risk, against her own city and king. She could have believed the same things and done nothing, and Jericho's fall would have taken her with it. The hiding, the lie to the king, the rope, the cord, the gathering of her family, all of it was faith with hands.

There are two things to draw out. The first is that God receives people the religious would never have chosen. Rahab's past is stated plainly in the text and never erased, and it did not disqualify her. If you are carrying a history you assume rules you out, her story says otherwise. The second is that faith that does nothing is not the kind of faith Rahab had. She did not wait to be sure. She acted on what she had heard about God, and the acting was the believing. Somewhere this week there is a scarlet cord to hang in a window, a decision that would make your trust in God visible. Rahab's example is that you hang it before the walls come down.