St Paul’s Canterbury, 1st September, 2013, Pentecost 15

Second in a Series of Brief Homilies:

Women Heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures

The Rt. Rev'd John Bayton, AM

Rahab

When I was a little boy I came home one Sunday from Sunday School and asked my Grandmother, “Granny, what is a Harlot?” She demurred and said, “I think you had better ask your grandfather”. I said to him “Grampy, what is a harlot”. He replied, “Good heavens, where did you learn that word?” I said, “At Sunday School. Don’t you remember the Lord told Joshua to march round the walls of Jericho for six days and on the seventh day to blow trumpets and the walls of Jericho would fall down? Well there was a woman named Rahab the harlot who befriended Joshua’s spies, and when Joshua’s trumpeters blew their trumpets and the walls fell down, Rahab and her family were saved.” “Well” said Grampy, A harlot is a strumpet!” I came away from that encounter believing a harlot was a person who blew a trumpet and made the walls of Jericho to fall down!

Let me set the scene for Jericho and Rahab. According to the bible at the end of the Late Bronze Age – about 1250 BC – Jericho was an outpost of the Egyptian Empire with an Egyptian Governor. The bible (Joshua Chapter 2 v 2) designates the Egyptian Governor as ‘King of Jericho”. Indeed there was no such thing.

Pharaoh Ahkenaton – 1364-1347 BC had imposed Monotheism on the people who had for millennia worshipped a range of gods. I have problem with dates here. Moses died on Mount Nebo about 1406 BC. If, as the scribes say, Joshua wrote his own Book sometime before 1000BC there is a gap of some 400 years. However the bible is not history but theology!

Joshua was Moses successor. He was a faithless man. What he should have done was to invade the land flowing with milk and honey as the Lord commanded him, but he did not. He sent spies into the land. Faithless. Disobedient. In Jericho he found a person who had more faith in the Lord than Joshua had. Her name was Rahab. She welcomed Joshua’s spies. She is challenged by her Rulers to explain her actions. In this period of history, the Late Bronze Age, the economy of Canaan was upheld by the production of flax which the Canaanites turned into rope and exported to Egypt.

Rahab and her family did not subscribe to the economic policies or the theology of ancient Canaan. The facts surrounding Rahab are political, not sexual. She prostituted herself to the wider demands of the Lord Yahweh. She knew that Joshua should have invaded the Land, despite the strength of Canaan. But Joshua (as I have noted) was a weak man. She hid the spies, covered up for them and thus became a prophet of Israel!

So, she was not a ‘harlot’ in the recognized sense of that word. She prostituted herself from the Canaanites, her own people in order to save the weak Joshua and his Israelite soldiers. In fact Rahab knew as much about the Exodus as Joshua did; and what is more, she worshipped Yahweh the God of the Israelites.

(Joshua 2 v 12) and without her devotion, military skill and faithfulness, Joshua would never have entered the Promised Land.

The rest of the story we all know; of how they marched around the walls of Jericho for six days and on the seventh day carried the Ark of the Covenant, blew trumpets and shouted with a great shout “And the walls came a tumbling down”.

How could they have possibly done this – profaning the Sabbath Day. Then followed the first holocaust. Apart from Rahab and her family they slaughtered every living thing- men, women, children, beasts and cattle. “….they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the house of the Lord..” At that time there was no ‘house of the Lord’. Remember this is a story, not history. In fact the walls of Jericho, the oldest city on the earth, fell down at least 2000 years before Joshua.