📖 Joshua Intensive — Unit 2: Rahab and the Scarlet Cord

Orientation

Joshua chapter two is a love story written into the middle of a war story. Israel is camped on the eastern bank of the Jordan, the river is at flood stage, the walled city of Jericho stands across the water, and forty years of wilderness wandering have come down to this single hinge moment. Joshua sends two men. The two men do not return with a military intelligence report. They return with a Canaanite woman's confession of faith and a scarlet cord hanging from a window. Before the first soldier ever crosses the river, before the first trumpet ever sounds, before the first stone of Jericho's wall ever falls, God has already begun the conquest of Canaan — and He has begun it inside the heart of a prostitute.

This unit walks through Joshua chapter two phrase by phrase. We will see Joshua's wisdom in sending two spies rather than twelve. We will see Rahab's faith and her risk. We will see the covenant the spies cut with her, the scarlet cord that became the sign of her salvation, and the New Testament's astonishing testimony to a Canaanite harlot who was found in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

I. Two Spies, Not Twelve (Joshua 2:1)

"Now Joshua the son of Nun sent out two men from Acacia Grove to spy secretly, saying, 'Go, view the land, especially Jericho.' So they went, and came to the house of a harlot named Rahab, and lodged there" (Joshua 2:1).

Forty years earlier, Moses had sent twelve spies into Canaan. The result was a disaster. Ten of the twelve came back terrified. They told the people the cities were too well fortified, the inhabitants were giants, and Israel could not take the land. Only two — Joshua and Caleb — gave a faithful minority report. The whole nation believed the ten. Israel turned away from the border and wandered the wilderness for forty years until that unbelieving generation died out.

Joshua had been one of the twelve. Joshua had stood there and watched what fear-driven reconnaissance can do to a nation. So when Joshua himself becomes the leader, he sends two — not twelve. He picks them carefully. He sends them secretly. And he gives them a focused mission: view the land, especially Jericho. A leader who has tasted the bitterness of his own past failure does not repeat it. Joshua's first tactical decision in chapter two reflects a man who learned what forty years in the wilderness was meant to teach.

II. The House on the Wall (Joshua 2:1–7)

The two spies enter Jericho and lodge at the house of a woman named Rahab. The text does not soften her profession. She is a harlot. Her house was probably built into the wall of the city itself — verse 15 tells us so — making it a natural stopping place for travelers and a discreet location for spies. Lodging at Rahab's house was not Israel's plan. It was God's providence. The spies do not arrive at the house of a respectable Canaanite. They arrive at the house of a sinful woman whom God had already begun to draw to Himself.

The king of Jericho hears that Israelite spies have entered the city, and his messengers come to Rahab demanding she hand them over. She has already hidden them. "And 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. 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'" (2:4–5).

The men are on her roof, hidden under stalks of flax. The king's officers race off in pursuit toward the Jordan, leaving the actual fugitives safely above their heads. Rahab has put her own life in mortal danger to protect two strangers from a nation she has heard about but has never met. The text does not commend her deception morally; it commends her faith. Her actions are the evidence that her heart has already crossed over to Israel's God.

III. Rahab's Confession of Faith (Joshua 2:8–11)

The heart of the chapter — and one of the great confessions of faith in the entire Old Testament — comes when Rahab climbs to the roof to speak with the men she has hidden. She does not bargain like a businesswoman. She testifies like a believer.

"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. 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. 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" (2:9–11).

Notice what Rahab knew, what she had heard, and what she now believed. She knew the Lord had given Israel the land. The conquest had not yet happened, but in her heart it was already settled. She had heard what God had done at the Red Sea forty years earlier and what He had done to Sihon and Og just recently. The news had reached Jericho. The whole city was afraid. But where the king of Jericho responded with fear and locked the gates, Rahab responded with faith and opened her door.

The climax of her confession is the climax of the whole chapter: "the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath." A Canaanite prostitute, who had grown up surrounded by altars to Baal and Ashtoreth, declares that the God of Israel is not just one god among many. He is the God — above and below, in heaven and on earth, with no rival anywhere. That confession would not have been out of place on the lips of Moses. It came from the lips of a harlot.

IV. The Covenant of Mercy (Joshua 2:12–14)

"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, and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death" (2:12–13).

Rahab's faith is not a private inner experience. It is missionary from the moment of its birth. She immediately asks that her family — father, mother, brothers, sisters, all that they have — be spared with her. She is one woman in one house in one wall in one doomed city, but the moment she comes to faith she begins to evangelize her own household. Faith never stays inside one heart. The first instinct of a saved soul is to bring others into the lifeboat.

The spies answer with a covenant: "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" (2:14). Two foreign men in a brothel make a blood covenant with a Canaanite prostitute, sworn in the name of the Lord, that her family will be spared in the day of judgment. The grace of God working ahead of the conquest is so wide it scoops up an entire household out of a city marked for destruction.

V. The Scarlet Cord (Joshua 2:15–21)

Rahab lets the spies down by a rope through the window — the same window that was set in the city wall. As they go, the spies give her a sign. "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... 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" (2:18–19).

The mark of her salvation is to be a scarlet cord hanging from her window — visible from the outside, marking her house as the one house in all of Jericho that would not fall when the walls came down. "And 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" (2:21).

The scarlet cord in Rahab's window is one of the clearest pictures in the Old Testament of the blood of Christ. The judgment of God was coming on Jericho. Every house in the city stood condemned. But the house under the scarlet sign would be spared. Not because the people inside it were better than the people outside it. Because of the sign. Because of the covenant. Because of the blood.

VI. Rahab in the New Testament — Hebrews, James, Matthew

The story of Rahab does not end in Joshua. The New Testament returns to her three times, and each return adds another layer of glory.

Hebrews 11:31 — "By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace." She is one of only two women named individually in the great roll call of faith in Hebrews 11 — alongside Sarah herself. The Holy Spirit places a Canaanite harlot in the same chapter as Abraham, Moses, and David, and gives her the same word that anchors them all: by faith.

James 2:25 — "Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?" James uses Rahab as the proof that genuine faith always shows itself in action. She did not just say she believed — she hid the spies, she sent them out by another way, she risked her life on what she had confessed. Her works were the visible evidence of her invisible faith.

Matthew 1:5 — and this is where the story breaks open. "Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth." The harlot of Jericho married into Israel. Her husband was Salmon — quite possibly one of the two spies she had hidden, though Scripture does not say. Her son was Boaz, who married Ruth the Moabitess. Their son was Obed. Obed's son was Jesse. Jesse's son was David. And from David's line came the Messiah. The Canaanite prostitute is the great-great-grandmother of King David and an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

God did not just save Rahab. God grafted her into the bloodline of the Savior. The same scarlet cord that hung from her window foreshadowed the blood of her own descendant, who would die for sinners and prostitutes and Canaanites and outsiders of every kind, fifteen hundred years later, on a hill outside another walled city.

VII. The Whoever Gospel

The story of Rahab is the story of a God who saves the wrong people. By the standards of Israel's law, Rahab was wrong on every count. Wrong nationality — Canaanite. Wrong religion — pagan. Wrong profession — prostitute. Wrong city — Jericho, marked for destruction. Wrong everything. And yet God's grace reached past every wrong category and laid hold of her by faith. The same grace that saved Rahab is the same grace that saves anyone who comes through the same door — by faith, under the scarlet sign.

The gospel of Joshua 2 is the gospel of whoever. Whoever was in the house with Rahab when judgment came was spared. Whoever was outside was lost. The line was not drawn by ethnicity or biography or résumé. The line was drawn by the scarlet cord. Anyone — absolutely anyone — who came under the sign was saved. That is the same gospel Jesus preached: "whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Rahab was a whoever. The thief on the cross was a whoever. So is every reader of these words.

VIII. Application — Confession That Costs and Confession That Saves

Donald Grey Barnhouse, the great pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, once led a young soldier in the First World War to faith in Christ. The boy came from a wealthy American family, and as the war ended he was about to go home to that pre-war life of parties and privilege. He told Barnhouse he was afraid he would slip back into his old habits — that the love of family and old friends would draw him away from his new faith. Barnhouse counseled him to make public confession of Christ to the first ten people from his old life he met when he got home.

The young man stepped off the train at the suburban station and almost immediately ran into a girl he had known socially. She greeted him warmly and asked how he was. He told her, "The greatest thing that could possibly happen to me has happened. I've taken the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior." Her smile froze. A short while later he ran into an old friend who said they would have great parties now that he was back. He told the friend the same thing. By the time he had told ten people, his old social circle had quietly fallen away from him. He had not lost them. He had been given up by them — separated from them by a confession that simply spoke the truth out loud.

That is what Rahab did in Jericho. She made a public stand for the God of Israel that risked her life and severed her from everything she had known. The girl who had lived as a Canaanite prostitute became the woman who confessed the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. The confession cost her everything. The confession saved her family.

And then there is the photograph story. A young Brazilian girl named Christina ran away from her poor village to the streets of Rio de Janeiro, dreaming of a better life. Her mother Maria followed. Knowing what life her daughter would fall into, Maria went from bar to brothel to hotel, and in each one she taped a photograph of herself onto a mirror or a phone booth. On the back of every photo she wrote one short note. Weeks later, after every dream had become a nightmare, Christina was descending the stairs of a cheap hotel when she saw her mother's picture. She crossed the lobby. She turned the photograph over. The note said: "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn't matter. Please come home. I still love you."

That is the gospel preached over the rooftops of Jericho. That is the message hanging from the scarlet cord. Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn't matter. Come under the sign. Come home. The blood of My Son is enough.

Closing

The chapter ends with Rahab back in her house, the scarlet cord tied in her window, her family gathered with her, waiting. Outside, the army of Israel gathers at the Jordan. The walls of Jericho still stand. The day of judgment has not yet come. But the woman in the wall has crossed over already. She has crossed over in her heart. The conquest of Jericho began the day Rahab believed.

And whoever you are — wherever you have been, whatever you have done, however far from home — the same God who hung a scarlet cord on the wall of Jericho is the same God who hung His Son on a cross outside Jerusalem. The sign is up. The door is open. The covenant is sworn. Whoever takes refuge under the scarlet mark of the blood of Christ will not perish in the day the walls come down.

A little boy was once asked if he had found Jesus. He thought about it and said, "Why sir, I didn't know He was lost. But I was, and He found me."

Rahab was lost. He found her. He grafted her into the family of His own Son. He wrote her name into the genealogy of the Messiah. And He still does the same today, every time the scarlet cord goes up in another window.

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