Joshua

2 Now Joshua the son of Nun sent out two men from Acacia Grove to spy secretly, saying, "Go, view the land, especially Jericho."

Jericho was a few miles west of the Jordan and a few miles north of the Dead Sea.  Jericho worshiped the god of the crescent moon, just like Islam.  Jericho means 'city of the moon'.

Initially one would have to ask, why send out spies?  Is spying this out good stewardship or lack of faith?  If God granted victory, then it didn't matter what the spies saw.  What if the spies came back with a bad report?  Joshua had seen this before.  Could the spies offer anything of value?  Ultimately, when looking at the story in whole, the spies ended up being witnesses to Rahab.  Their value was in her salvation.

So they went, and came to the house of a harlot named Rahab, and lodged there. ² And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, "Behold, men have come here tonight from the children of Israel to search out the country."

³ So the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, "Bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered your house, for they have come to search out all the country."

⁴ Then the woman took the two men and hid them. So she said, "Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. ⁵ And it happened as the gate was being shut, when it was dark, that the men went out. Where the men went I do not know; pursue them quickly, for you may overtake them." ⁶ (But she had brought them up to the roof and hidden them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order on the roof.) ⁷ Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan, to the fords. And as soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate.

Rahab's lie was wrong.  But I think this is simply an unbeliever acting like one.  This is the honesty of the bible; the dark of a sinfallen, wicked heart that sets the backdrop for the contrast of the light and life of our Lord.  God, in His sovereignty, can even work in the midst of dishonesty. 

⁸ Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, ⁹ and said to the men: "I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. ¹⁰ For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. ¹¹ And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. ¹² Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the Lord, since I have shown you kindness, that you also will show kindness to my father's house, and give me a true token, ¹³ and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death."

¹⁴ So the men answered her, "Our lives for yours, if none of you tell this business of ours. And it shall be, when the Lord has given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you."

¹⁵ Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall; she dwelt on the wall. ¹⁶ And she said to them, "Get to the mountain, lest the pursuers meet you. Hide there three days, until the pursuers have returned. Afterward you may go your way."

¹⁷ So the men said to her: "We will be blameless of this oath of yours which you have made us swear, ¹⁸ unless, when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you bring your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father's household to your own home. ¹⁹ So it shall be that whoever goes outside the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we will be guiltless. And whoever is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him. ²⁰ And if you tell this business of ours, then we will be free from your oath which you made us swear."

²¹ Then she said, "According to your words, so be it." And she sent them away, and they departed. And she bound the scarlet cord in the window.

²² They departed and went to the mountain, and stayed there three days until the pursuers returned. The pursuers sought them all along the way, but did not find them. ²³ So the two men returned, descended from the mountain, and crossed over; and they came to Joshua the son of Nun, and told him all that had befallen them. ²⁴ And they said to Joshua, "Truly the Lord has delivered all the land into our hands, for indeed all the inhabitants of the country are fainthearted because of us."

God may have used these spies as a means of courage and confidence in the ways of the Lord.  God can use all our fears, weaknesses and misguided ways for his glory.  Regardless of how God may have used this for Joshua, he was also doing something bigger.  The spies purpose seems to have been as a witness to Rahab.   

Rahab was a harlot in a unbelieving city.  Yet, the bible tells us, it was by faith she was saved from perishing.  Rahab had heard about the Lord and great works he had done and she was responding to that knowledge.  It was her trust and faith in God that brought her to the point of acting the ways she did.  James notes this.

It's interesting that neither of these speak of her lie - she is commended for her faith, not her ethics. 

So these guys are sent in to spy and the first thing they do is go to a prostitute, that doesn't sound right.  Some want to believe that she was an innkeeper, but this just isn't likely.  Some of this is a desire by some to clean up the lineage of Jesus Christ, as if they are doing Him a favor.  On the contrary, I think this is clearly God's hand doing a larger work that was unseen at the time.  In Matthew 1:5 Rahab is listed in the genealogy of Jesus.  She was the mother of Boaz from the book of Ruth.  Rahab was a Gentile prostitute in the bloodline of Christ.  Her son, Boaz then marries Ruth, who was a Moabitess, that continued the blood line of Christ.

So these men spy from Rahab's house.  Besides being directed there by God, they may have been drawn there because it was a good location and a place to gather information on the people. 

In verse 2 we see that they weren't very good spies since the King already knows they are there.  Rahab tells of how they are frightened of them even though it was about 40 years since they conquered the 2 kings (Sihon and Og).  She makes a profession of faith which is pretty awesome considering there was a city with no presence of anyone who knew of him.  Rahab hides the spies and when they go they are to go to the hills for 3 days to avoid their pursuers.  They promise that if Rahab hangs the scarlet cord in her window, her house will be protected.  This picture of the scarlet thread is very close in appearance to the Passover. 

There is also a model happening here that is worth noting.  If we consider these 2 guys as witnesses and not spies, then we start seeing a model of the book of Revelation.  Consider two spies send by Yeshua (Joshua, rendered Jesus in the New Testament) into an unbelieving city.  This unbelieving people know of the Lord and his works.  The work of the Lord, in fact, struck fear in them.  But not a fear that led to faith; except for Rahab.  Destruction was coming and inevitable, but the faithful would be preserved by the scarlet thread, a picture of the blood of Christ.  While Rahab appeared to be in Jericho, she doesn't seem to be a citizen there.  She is separated, living at the wall, on the edge.  Another fascinating part of this picture is that Jericho so much resembles Islam that is growing so much in our world as we approach the end.

©2015 Doug Ford