What a story!
And factual to the core, having literally occurred!
Really all of Joshua chapter 2 reads like a classic “spy” novel, except it is instead non-fiction, the absolute truth!
Here’s its first verse, number one of twenty-four: “And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim TWO MEN to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named RAHAB, and lodged there.”
Where did Joshua learn to send “spies” like this?
From Moses. “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men, that they may search (spy) the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them.” Numbers 13:1-2
No doubt Joshua was a good learner!
Furthermore … Joshua’s spies had a plan.
They would locate and use a “house” somewhere in the City Jericho … as a base of operations for their covert mission. But HOW they chose the place is not recorded for us!
Yet God, surely, had gone before them, preparing their way!
Their hostess (a harlot named Rahab) already had been “touched” with a holy fear of the Almighty! And she was favorable to the two (likely young) Jewish boys, soldiers.
Long story short … Rahab protected the men.
And wanted for her (and her family) to be “saved” when the Jewish attack finally came!
All of which transpired, exactly as planned.
Virtually … the next thing we know of Rahab, she is married!
And a mother!
Matthew gives us the details, five hundred years later!
“And SALMON begat Booz of RAHAB; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias.” Wow, Matthew 1:5-6.
We now know the name of Rahab’s husband. He was a Jew, as one might suspect. “Salmon,” to be precise. He and Rahab were parents to a baby they named “Boaz!” (Yes, the Greek spellings are a little different than the Hebrew, but the names are essentially the same.)
So Rahab is mother to Boaz and grandmother to Obed and great-grandmother to Jesse? Yes, clearly so. That makes her then the great-great grandmother to David, King David of Israel!
And so forth, down through the centuries until Jesus Christ is born, God’s Son!
Rahab, in the “godly line” that gave us Jesus, the humanity of God incarnate?
Yes!
What an event of Grace!
What a biography!
Truly fact is often stranger than fiction!
More beautiful, too!
Oh, one more thought, a possibility anyway.
What was Rahab’s husband’s name?
I remember, we just learned it … Salmon.
I’ve wondered for years … at least it is imaginable … Salmon well could have been one of the very spies (there were two of them, you recall) who first came to Rahab and offered her the marvelous Grace of God! Whom Rahab protected, at great risk!
Is Joshua 2:1 a love story, or the start of one?
Was it maybe “love at first sight?”
If so, no wonder Rahab was so impassioned in her desire to save the spies, no matter what it might have personally cost her!
And if things happened that way, God has once again shown His sweet Mercy and ingenious Wisdom in the lives of us human beings!
We used to put it this way, when I was a boy:
Rahab + Salmon!
And if that be the case, the equation fully reads …
Rahab + Salmon = Boaz!
And then you (we all really) know the rest of the story!
Can I prove this?
No, certainly not the part about Salmon being one of the spies.
But the rest of the account, yes!
It’s the inspired Word of God.
But “love” got into this story somewhere!
(Wish we could have heard all the conversation between this presumably pretty gentile girl and her two guests during that whole time!)
Mercy, God is good!
— Dr. Mike Bagwell
Husbands, think back today to the hour God led you to the girl who is now your wife! Then thank the Lord for the “love story” you can tell!