Joshua Chapter 2: Rahab hides the Israelite spies

Chapter 2 is the fascinating story of the prostitute Rahab, whose house is on the wall of the city of Jericho. Joshua sends two spies to see what Jericho is like, because Jericho lies opposite where they will be crossing the river Jordan. Rahab takes these spies into her house and hides them from the king’s messengers, who come and demand that she hand the men over. Rahab says the men have been and gone, and the king’s messengers leave. She then tells the men hidden on the roof that she knows that the God of Israel will give Jericho into the hands of Israel as he has made them victorious up to this time.

She asks them for kindness for everyone in her family just as she has been kind in hiding and so saving them. The two spies give her their promise and she lets them escape down a cord from her window on the city wall. The men tell her that their promise will be void unless she hangs a scarlet cord in her window and brings all her family into her house. Rahab agrees, and the men escape and return to Joshua, telling him everything and saying that God has given them the city.

There are several rich and important spiritual meanings in this very graphic story. First, we should appreciate that the spies do not seem to go anywhere else in Jericho than to Rahab! The point is, they don’t need to, because Rahab’s prostitution – selling her body for men to enjoy – represents the quality of the whole city of Jericho, which stands almost directly opposite where Israel will cross the Jordan. It must and will be taken. (See Doctrine of Life 46).

In this story, Jericho stands for a sensual life. It's the sort of life that comes into play when anything we know about God’s truth gets perverted and rejected as nothing. No truth, no values, no conscience, nothing! (See Arcana Caelestia 2973[6].) This is why the story involves the prostitute Rahab, because she pictures that level of life.

But Rahab sees herself for what she is and for what her city is, and she knows that with the God of the Israelites coming, there is no future for Jericho. She believes the future lies with Israel and their God.

So what we have in this story is a sinful woman whose mind and heart and actions turn towards repentance, and even a genuine worship and acknowledgement of God. For us, it is the picture of our unspiritual or natural life which is self-gratifying, hedonistic, pleasure-seeking and opportunistic. But hopefully for us it is also the picture of our wish and our intention to believe in and follow God (Arcana Caelestia 5639[2]). If we have that wish and work towards it, as with Rahab, it will eventually save us from ourselves and save everything about us (all Rahab’s family).

Next, we should look at these two men who are to spy out Jericho but who go in to Rahab.

Perhaps a better word than to ‘spy’ is to ‘espy’ which means to observe but even more to take a very long hard look at how a situation is. If we direct that to ourselves we are talking about real self-examination, about looking at how we have been and what we have thought, said and done, or not. We can only examine ourselves properly if we have begun to take on various values and truths, and look at ourselves in their light (Doctrine of Life 6).

There are two men, not one, and this is because our spiritual life involves a love for what is true and a love for what is good (Arcana Caelestia 5194). When we love and want to live by what is true, then things we know becomes things we feel and we have delight in them and doing them.

Lastly, note how these two men are hidden by Rahab high up on the roof, under her drying flax stalks. In the Word, anything up high is a picture of being closer to God, nearer to what is true (Divine Love and Wisdom 103). We see more high up! And the flax is the fibre from which our spiritual clothing – these truths again – can be made. And flax provides linen which was used for the high priest’s robes.

5639. 'And Joseph saw Benjamin with them' means the discernment by the celestial of the spiritual that the spiritual intermediary was present with the truths. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing' as understanding and discerning, dealt with in 2150, 2807, 3764, 4567, 4723, 5400; from the representation of the ten sons of Jacob - to whom 'with them', that is, the ones whom Joseph saw Benjamin with, refers - as the truths within the natural, dealt with in 5403, 5419, 5427, 5458, 5512; and from the representation of 'Benjamin' as the intermediary, dealt with in 5411, 5413, 5443. The reason the expression 'spiritual intermediary' is used here is that the truths which are represented by 'the ten sons of Jacob' had now to be joined to truth from the Divine, which was 'Joseph'; but that joining together does not take place except through an intermediary that is a spiritual one. Therefore immediately after that intermediary had been recognized, Joseph told the man over his house, 'Bring the men to the house, and slaughter and prepare [an animal]; for the men will eat with me at midday', meaning that they would be brought in and joined to him because they were accompanied by the intermediary.

[2] A further brief statement needs to be made about what the spiritual compared with the natural is since the majority living in the Christian world do not know what the spiritual is. They are so ignorant of what it is that when they hear the term they are at a loss, saying to themselves, What the spiritual is, no one knows. Essentially the spiritual existing with a person is his actual affection for what is good and true, loved for its own sake and not for any selfish reason, as well as an affection for what is right and fair, likewise loved for its own sake and not for any selfish reason. When a person has inward feelings of delight and pleasure, and more so if feelings of blessedness and bliss flow from them, they constitute the spiritual present with him, which does not come to him from the natural world but from the spiritual world or heaven, that is, from the Lord by way of heaven. This then is the spiritual which, when it reigns in a person, influences and so to speak gives colour to everything he thinks, wills, or does, and which causes his thoughts and acts of will to partake of what is spiritual, till at length these too become spiritual qualities present with him when he passes from the natural world into the spiritual world. In short, the spiritual consists in an affection stirred by charity and faith, that is, an affection for what is good and true, and in the delight and pleasure, and even more so in the blessedness and bliss that flow from them, which are feelings residing with a person inwardly and making him someone truly Christian.

[3] The majority in the Christian world are ignorant of what the spiritual is for the reason that they make faith, not charity, the essential virtue in the Church. Consequently, since the few who do bother about faith give little if any thought at all to charity or know what charity is, and since therefore they have no knowledge or any perception of the affection characteristic of charity, an affection that is not present in them, they cannot possibly know what the spiritual is. This is especially so at the present day when scarcely any charity exists with anyone, for now is the final period of the Church. But it should be recognized that in a general sense the spiritual means an affection both for what is good and for what is true, which is why heaven is called the spiritual world and the internal sense of the Word is called the spiritual sense. But more specifically what is essentially an affection for good is called the celestial, while that which is essentially an affection for truth is called the spiritual.