What to Do with Gentiles?

So the young men who were spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and her mother and her brothers and all she had; they also brought out all her relatives and placed them outside the camp of Israel. Joshua 6:23 NASB

Outsidemihuts. That’s what you do with Gentiles. You save them, but you keep them away, outside the camp. After all, Gentiles are not really like you. You are God’s chosen. They are not. You are part of the household of Israel. They are not. You are a descendent of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They are not. You have Torah. They do not. So you can save them from extinction (and fulfill the obligation of hesed), but you don’t dare let them in! That would pollute the bloodline. That would be risky. That would introduce the possibility of pagan syncretism. No, oh no, not that! Just let them live on the edge. Shut the door. Close the gate. They really don’t belong.

Mihuts is the issue in Acts 15. Rahab all over again. What do you do with the Gentiles? And Joshua provides the answer that Sha’ul repeats. Joshua brings Rahab into the midst. The verse (v. 25) says, “she has lived in Israel to this day.” But we need the Hebrew to see what is really happening. vateshev bekerev Israel ad hayon. The key is bekerev, translated “in” but really meaning “into the inner parts” or “in the midst,” the internal social structure of the community. In other words, Joshua ensures that Rahab and all her family is fully incorporated into the fabric of the community. She is not left as an outsider.

Why is this important? Because Rahab is not a convert! She is a Gentile from a city that was to be completely destroyed because it was pagan. She is a prostitute, selling sexual favors. She lives in a place of pagan gods. She never confesses her allegiance to Torah. But God is doing something in Rahab’s life, and Joshua has the spiritual awareness to see that. Rahab knows the name of YHVH. Rahab understands and employs hesed. Rahab declares that YHVH has given the land to Israel. How Rahab knows all this is never mentioned but that fact that she does know is enough for us to realize that somehow, some way, Rahab has a relationship with YHVH. And that is enough. She is welcomed in.

The central question of the apostolic letters is the question of Rahab. YHVH is doing something with Gentiles. Peter was forced to acknowledge this at the house of Cornelius. Paul saw it everywhere he went. But what do you do with Gentiles? Do you insist that they become Jews (through the steps of the proselyte) before you welcome them into full fellowship? That’s what the Judaizers claimed. “Yes, let them in, but only after they have converted.” Paul says “No! God is calling them. Who are we to require more than that?” Rahab stands in the background. “If God is bringing them in, we must open the doors and offer full fellowship. Yes, they can learn our way of life after that, but we cannot put requirements on them that God does not.” Rahab is watching. Paul’s argument is Joshua’s action. bekerev. Into the midst. It doesn’t matter if the person doesn’t fit my expectations. It only matters that YHVH has issued an invitation. Rahab is the answer to the Gentile question.

And, by the way, now it is even more significant that the verb used to describe Rahab in the midst is an imperfect, a continuing action. Rahab is still in the midst because YHVH is still sending out invitations. You and I are Rahab’s children. So was the Messiah.

Our job, and the job if every community of the Way, is to develop the awareness of recognizing when God is working in the life of someone outside—and bring them in!

Topical Index: Rahab, mihuts, outside, bekerev, in the midst, Acts 15, Joshua 6:23, Gentile

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R. Gambno

I see a similar story of the Gentiles position to Israel pointed out in Ruth. Naomi in her decision to return to Beit-Lechem urges the two wives of her deceased son’s to return to Moab and their families. It is during this interaction that Naomi seems to reveal a little insight into the mindset of her Hebrew relationship to Gentiles.
While reading this conversation these verses struck me deeply. “Go back, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb who could become your husbands? Go back, my daughters; go your way; for I’m too old to have a husband. Even if I were to say, ‘I still have hope’; even if I had a husband tonight and bore sons; would you wait for them until they grew up? Would you refuse to marry, just for them?”
I see in these verses that Naomi views a Gentiles entry into a relationship with God and His chosen people as being through a Marriage Covenant. Yet, we know that the story doesn’t end with that impossibility as Naomi presents. We find that it is Ruth’s declaration of faith and commitment to God along with her desire to be of the Israeli nation that she walks with into Israel.
I might add that in verse 1:8 my limited resources show in Hebrew that Naomi declares both wives have shown hesed to her husband and son’s. Similar to your description of Rehab, Skip.

laurita hayes

Whoo hoo! There’s hope for me! (On a continuing, imperfect basis, of course!)

I started out in life looking at religion as an external job. You have to LOOK ‘right’ to be included. (And, between us, we can say the word, “love”, but, it’s so very messy in application, that it is just best to assume it is only ‘safe’ after it has been thoroughly whitewashed with that external look-right stuff.)

After I got flung outside the camp, it all looked different.

I was reading a book about a lad from New Orleans that got kidnapped and brought aboard a slave trader ship because of his ability to play the flute. Every ship needed someone who could provide music because it had been determined that more slaves stayed alive if you could get them to move, and music was a cue for them to dance. It was called “dancing the slaves”. Well, the book was a lurid, accurate description of the typical conditions to be found in such a place, and this small 13 year old grows old in the process. At one point in the journey, the inhuman hopelessness, stench, sickness and death get to him, and he begins to hate the slaves for being so bad off. He goes to his bunk and refuses to perform his ghastly job. He is promptly strung up and lashed. Afterwards, he goes through a transformation. He no longer identifies with the slavers, and begins to sympathize instead with the slaves, as they are, essentially, being treated the same. He whispers his name to one of the boys, and when his pipe is flung down the hatch by the wickedest man on board and is ordered to find it in the dark, it gets passed to him. He has had a paradigm shift, for sure!

I used to look on the outside for the line between a ‘good’ person and a ‘bad’ one. After reading Soltzenitzyn, I began to hope again. I was going through a particularly low point in my life at the time, but when I began to see that we are all a mixed bag, and that love is not a thing to save for just those who were ‘safe’ to love, I thought that there was hope for me, too. Up to that point, I had been trying very hard to ‘do’ love in some very hard places, and it was only serving to make me a loser. It is hard to get up the next day and do it again. The only reason I didn’t turn to hate instead, some days, I am sure, was because I knew that hate was even more expensive! The knowledge that love was not working out for me; was not ‘paying off’ seemingly at all, was an external clue that I was ‘failing’ at it. But, to understand it as that that is no basis for determining who was ‘inside’ or ‘outside’, put the life back in me. Good thing, too, for the hardest challenge yet was just about to hit me, and I would not have had the courage to hang on if I had not been given that gift of insight.

The day I really identified with the lost was the day I finally started out on the right foot in the love business. Love is never safe. If I cannot love the lost as I love myself, I am not qualified to love at all. If I cannot put myself in the shoes of the one who is nailing me, then I am not qualified to be in the camp. If I cannot see in the worst of the worst someone who is absolutely essential for my welfare, and the welfare of all heaven and the entire universe for all eternity; someone who will be horribly missed if they are not in that eternity, then I do not have what it is going to take to get up in the morning and love. If my offender does not look like me, then I will never have what it takes to truly forgive. Love IS the action where I place the interests and needs of another in the place of my own, with my own, as my own. To be in this camp is to be a person who is striving to include all those who are not (yet!) in this camp.

“He drew a circle to shut me out; heretic, rebel; a thing to flout
But Love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that took him in.”

This poem, that I learned at age seven, just before my world blew apart, is still the best sermon I have heard on HOW to love. It taught me what love did, and how it does it. I still find it useful to this day. The ones who are outside the camp put THEMSELVES there. The ones who are inside the camp are the ones who are to take the action of inclusion. Rahab qualified for inclusion because she included the spies into HER circle. Includers are the ones who are included. It takes Heaven to think this stuff up! Perfection is the art of inclusion.

Michael Stanley

Laurita, You said: “If I cannot put myself in the shoes of the one who is nailing me, then I am not qualified to be in the camp.” No offense, but your thoughts are too “Iffy” for me and your Amy Carmichael definition of love leaves me… wanting.

(If any don’t know “IF” by Amy C. Google it. Sorry, I don’t know how to hyperlink).

If, in my search for “campers” (disciples, converts) I seek out the worst of the worst- those who are more animal than human, who are not yet filled to the full with hate, evil, greed, but are diligently striving toward that goal, I will no doubt find them and in the end I may well be surprised at the depth of my own similar depravity, but more surprised that I should survive the encounter or certainly repeated ones if I am so foolish as to persist in trying to convert the unwilling and unwanting. If, on the other hand, I seek for those people who at least have the hope of becoming human; those who admire and desire attainable attributes such as love, goodness, kindness but don’t know “The Way” I have a better chance at fulfilling His call. No doubt I will fall short of my goal of converting (discipling) the ‘unevil’ (mainly the churched) and I will continue to be disappointed that so few really seek to model Yeshua’s obedience, faithfulness, love of Torah, chesed and forgiveness (myself included), but most likely I won’t be martyred for trying and will live to learn from my failings and will try again…after pouting, grumbling and… napping. No, I don’t need to search the world over for the one in a billion evil men who might see Messiah in me and come into this camp when there are so many who are “ripe unto harvest” and while in the process of “convertsation” do not seek to maim, rob or kill me. I do admire your lofty aim and you may have earned the right to call me unloving, uncaring or even cowardly, but at least I’ll be in the circle that you and love drew me in and at the campfire Yeshua drew, grinning ear to ear that I am still here to hear more of your wars, wisdom and wit. Shalom, Michael

Judi Baldwin

Hi Laurita,
My husband is a clinical psychologist (not practicing currently) and for thirty years had that poem, “He drew a circle to shut me out…” hanging, framed, in his office. Almost everyone who entered his office over the years commented on it. FYI…the author’s name is Henry Markham. Don’t know if he’s still alive, but if so, I want to acknowledge him. The poem has obviously been around for awhile…and continues to have an impact on many.
So glad you mentioned it in your post. :-))

Dan Kraemer

On a technical point, James 2:25 “confirms” that Rahab was a harlot but I have read that she was not necessarily so because of a possible misunderstanding of the Hebrew word from which the Septuagint was translated, (and from which James was probably quoting.) It is suggested that the word may also refer to a woman engaged in a retail trade (and not necessarily that of her own body).
Josephus, as his own account of the story of Rahab relates, believed she was an inn-keeper, and not a harlot. I am told the Greek word, πόρνη, is also loosely related to words that describe conveyance for the purposes of trade.
This is not pertinent to the heart of your message but do you have any comment?

laurita hayes

Judi, Thank you! I have wanted to know that for years. I always like to give credit. Thank you for doing it for me!

Rich Pease

As I understand it, the Father does the drawing.
We, as “fishers of men”, help to reel them in.

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers
into the harvest.”

Jordan D.

As for the Judaizers, I think it is interesting to note that scripture never provided for a “conversion” process. From the very beginning at Sinai, and continuing thereafter, the moment you made the decision to follow YHWH, then you started following his instructions and basically learning them as you went along. There was no threshold level of knowledge that had to be attained. There were only a few simple basic rules that had to be followed before entering the camp.

Michael C

That makes sense to me, Jordan.