by:
08/08/2025
0
No one in Israel or Jericho would have voted Rahab to be God’s chosen “heroine” in this narrative. The Hebrew word for “harlot” leaves no question of her morality. Her act of hiding the spies followed by deceiving the soldiers can hardly be seen as acts of faith. Yet we can never ignore God’s lesson to Samuel (1 Sam 16:7), “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Rahab is mentioned in Joshua 2 and 6, in Hebrews 11, Matthew 1 and James 2. In Hebrews and James she is an example of faith in practice, and in Matthew she is in the genealogy of Jesus. God saw faith where we would not have. He still looks at our hearts.