The opening story of the Book of Joshua frames the book’s biggest riddle: Were the native people of Canaan annihilated in a horrible holy war as the first half of the book suggests, or were the local populations eventually integrated into Israelite society as appears in the book’s second half? Scholars debate this supposed history, and the heroine of these first chapters may hold the key to the mystery, held with a long red ribbon as the key chain.
Rahab, a resident of Jericho, is a Canaanite woman who is described as a sex worker. Aramaic translations prefered to describe her as ‘an innkeeper’. Her Canaanite neighbors may have labeled her ‘a collaborator’; for her family, whom she saved, she would be known as a savior, and for the Hebraic authors of this biblical book she is a heroine whose boldness moves the plot in favor of Joshua’s conquest. According to some traditions is the paradigm of faith and she even ends up marrying Joshua. Christian traditions cite her as the ancestor of Jesus.
“Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim, East of the Jordan, instructing them: “Go, scout the region of Jericho.” So they set out, and they came to the house of a harlot named Rahab and lodged there.”
Rahab, whose name means ‘wide’ might be a veiled reference to the ancient local goddess of fertility. She lives on the margins - her home is situated within the wall of Jericho. She takes the two spies in, protects them from the local king, makes a deal with them to save her and her household, and sets into motion the drama that will eventually make sure the walls of her city and home come tumbling down.
Why does she do it?
Some scholars claim that Rahab represents the Canaanite response to the conquest, echoed by so many colonial sagas throughout history, full of tough choices.
In The Joshua Generation, Dr. Rachel Havrelock focuses on Rahab’s depictions as a brave woman, a sex worker, the nation’s midwife - and as a symbol of ‘the household’. She points out that the saga about the building of a homeland begins inside the only local home we will encounter throughout this entire book. From the intimacy of a domestic interior comes the cruelty of conquest:
“This scene on which the plot of Joshua depends dramatizes the process through which households scattered among the regions of Canaan sacrificed some of their autonomy in order to confederate and thereby hope to weather repeated imperial siege. The tumbling walls of Jericho then symbolize the absorption of Canaanite households and cities into the nation and the army of Israel.
…Postcolonial interpretations of the story have discovered a typology in which a native woman aids and abets the colonizers of her land. Like Cortés’s translator Dona Marina (La Malinche) or Pocahontas with John Smith, Rahab betrays her people in order to be translated into a new political order... The stock character is a woman, many would argue, because the indigenous people whose land is penetrated by settlers figure as natural, passive, and therefore gendered as feminine. In such readings, one woman stands in for all the local people at the same time that only a woman who can be overcome sexually and domesticated through marriage can be absorbed into settler society.”
Rahab, Havrelock demonstrates, is anything but passive, demonstrating the resourcefulness and leadership of women everywhere, esp. under patriarchal charge.
”Rahab dictates the conditions of Israel’s entry into Canaan. She will allow the spies to return to Joshua and initiate the conquest so long as they absorb her household into their nation. Her enabling narrative thus reconfigures the distinction between Israel and the peoples of Canaan such that Israel’s presence in the land depends upon entrance of its residents into the community.
..We might even understand the charge of prostitution in political terms—the household maintained several alliances and was open to multiple partners. As promiscuous as the editors found the household to be, they admit with the story of Rahab that it is the building block—even the birthplace—of the nation.
.. The image of Rahab giving birth to the spies thus suggests that the people of Israel come into being in a local, Canaanite space and that the alliance of households is what makes the state possible. Rahab is the agent of change from a local city-state to a nation; Israel builds on her story as she subscribes to the new system.
The homeland begins in a woman’s home.”
As a secret sign that will spare her household when the invading armies arrive, Rahab famously hangs a red ribbon in her window. The red sign echoes the doors of Exodus, covered by blood as the nation is born out of Egypt. Rahab, like the midwives, is framed here in a veiled maternal role.
What happens next? The authors of Joshua invite us to travel along, guided by suspense, rooting for the heroine, and hopefully able to read between the lines and pay attention to what this mysterious story is yet to reveal to us today.
The journey is just getting started.
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Very juicy post! The indigenous people where I live in Pennsylvania were called “petticoats” by the Iroquois for their peaceful ways. And matriarchal households.
Very juicy post! The indigenous people where I live in Pennsylvania were called “petticoats” by the Iroquois for their peaceful ways. And matriarchal households.