Surprise, Surprise (2)

and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have despaired because of you.  Joshua 2:9  NASB

I know that – Yesterday we discovered that the spies considered all that happened to them as the fulfillment of a divine, but invisible, plan.  They just didn’t know it at the time it was happening.  But apparently it wasn’t news to Rahab.  Her opening conversation with these men confirms that God has already given the land to Israel.  From her perspective, it is a fait accompli.  No surprise to her.  yadati ki natan.  Did you notice the ki again?  Remember that this conjunction is the same one used by the spies in their report to Joshua.  ki (because) implies that they now see God behind all that happened, but Rahab saw it first, before it happened!

This is startling.  Perhaps it is the real center point of the story.  Here is a whore who knows God is politically active in her pagan environment.  She knows that this God, the God of Israel—not the god of her people in Jericho—is the triumphant God who defeated Egypt and all others who stood in the way of His people.  She also knows what ḥesedimplies—mutual obligation.  The fact that ḥesed has no cognates in other ancient Semitic languages should be enough to raise a red flag.  How did she know this crucial term?  For that matter, how did she conclude that YHVH would destroy her city?  And how did she know that imploring ḥesed would save her, a pagan woman of very questionable background? In many ways, Rahab is the real woman of faith here.  The spies merely provide the stage for her performance.  God is invisibly active in this “outsider” in ways that even we would have found difficult to accept.  It appears that she has more connection, and more faith, with the God of Israel than do the spies.

Perhaps this is more often the case than we admit.  We’re attuned to God’s manifestation in and through believers, but far too often we close the windows to the souls of the outsiders, the ones that don’t meet our requirements for spiritual insight.  We’ve been trained to draw a hard and fast line between the “saved” and the “sinner,” and that line means we don’t listen, we don’t look, we don’t ask what God is doing through them.  We miss the story because it doesn’t fit our righteous theology.  Even the spies didn’t fully comprehend what Rahab was saying.  They didn’t understand the enormity of her declaration, the depth of her faith, or the action of God in her life until it was over.  Fortunately, Joshua did—he welcomed her into the family as a true follower of Israel’s God.  In fact, in Jewish legend, Joshua marries her.  How else did you think she ends up in the line of the Messiah?

I wonder what would happen if we put our religious categories on the shelf, if we set aside the theological presuppositions and assumptions, and listened for the whispers of the Lord in the mouths of outsiders.  I wonder if we’re secure enough in our own faith to open the windows and let other voices in.

Topical Index: Rahab, outsider, ḥesed, yada, Joshua 2:9