The Scarlet Cord

In the book of Joshua we read that Rahab lies in order to protect the Hebrew spies.

Was she right to do that? The issue is not as easy to divide as it may seem at first glance, because the text here does not say that God approved of her lying, nor does the text of Hebrews or of Joshua say that God disapproved of her lying. And so we can't settle it simply on the basis of what is explicitly said here in the text. This text causes many to scratch their heads. Is God condoning lying, even though He says clearly in the Ten Commandments that we shouldn't lie?

And if He is condoning lying, what are the special circumstances that allow it? Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul helps us unravel this difficult passage. We continue today with our study of the book of Joshua. We recall from the first chapter that God had commissioned Joshua to lead the people into the land of Canaan and to begin now the conquest of the Promised Land. And He called Joshua and the people to courage based on His promise that He would never forsake them and that He would be with them, giving them every piece of ground upon which their feet would step. So chapter 2 of Joshua begins with Joshua's strategy to implement the order to occupy the land. As he is amassing his forces before he begins the actual campaign, he sends out two spies who are to cross the Jordan, go into Canaan, and spy out the land, especially the city of Jericho, which was one of the most important citadels of the Canaanite people.

It was, as you know, a walled city that seemed to be impregnable in the ancient world. And it is in this context that we meet this woman Rahab, who is so controversial in terms of biblical history, but who is listed in the catalog of the heroes and heroines of the faith in the book of Hebrews. But let's read then the narrative as we pick it up in the beginning of chapter 2 of Joshua. Now Joshua the son of Nun sent out two men from Acacia Grove to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, especially Jericho. And so they went and came to the house of a harlot named Rahab and lodged there. And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, men have come here tonight from the children of Israel to search out the country. All right, here we're told that the two spies, when they enter into the city of Jericho, immediately go to the house of Rahab, who is identified in the text as a harlot.

Now that may seem somewhat strange to us. In the first case, we don't know whether Rahab was a temple prostitute involved in harlotry associated with fertility rites in pagan religions or if she was just a normal run-of-the-mill woman of the night or woman of the street. I think the probability here is that she was not a cultic prostitute but was rather just the ordinary infamous kind of prostitute. Now from a strategic viewpoint, you might ask, you might ask, why in the world would the spies go to her house? It sounds almost as if they were deviating from the plan that they were to follow, and instead of doing the responsible task of spying out the land, they were indulging themselves by a visit, as soldiers and sailors frequently will do, to a house of ill repute.

Or, as some others have suggested, and this is speculation, of course, is that the reason they went there was that there would probably be no better place to conceal strangers in a city like Jericho than in the house of a prostitute, because prostitutes entertain foreigners and strangers as a matter of course. If you've ever been to the city of Amsterdam and see a whole city given to prostitution that is protected by law and all of that, and you see how many military personnel, particularly sailors on shore leave, who visit these places of prostitution. It's almost a military tradition. Now obviously there are many men in the military that don't engage in this sort of thing, and I don't want to suggest that they all do. But there is a commercial enterprise that caters to soldiers and sailors, and that's not true simply in the 20th century. That's been true throughout history. So it would not be unusual for a strange soldier to be found in the house of a prostitute.

That's the point. So let's assume the best of our Hebrew spies that they went to this place as part of their effort to remain concealed for their task of espionage. But their mission somehow has been betrayed, because we are told that the king of Jericho has received word that foreign spies are in the city. And he thinks, first of all, about going to the house of Rahab.

I don't know what this says about her reputation or whether that was part of the report that he had received about the possible whereabouts of the spies. But in any case, the king, we read in verse 3, sent to Rahab saying, bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered your house, for they have come to search out all the country. Then the woman took the two men and hid them. And so she said, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.

Now let me just stop there for a second. Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. Ladies and gentlemen, she did know where they were from. Here is a report of a blatant lie. Now, I talked about this episode recently in a miniseries we did on principles of ethics in the Christian life. And I talked about Rahab in our broader conversation of the biblical concept of the sanctity of truth when we were struggling with the question, must a believer always on every occasion tell the truth? The overarching principle biblically, of course, is the sanctity of truth and that there is no justification for willy-nilly lying and fraud and deception. But the question I asked on that occasion was, is the sanctity of truth and that occasion was, is it ever under any circumstances permitted of God to lie?

And I understand that that question receives different answers from the great theologians of church history. One of my favorite teachers of theology and of ethics, whose textbook I use in my ethics course in the seminary, is John Murray. He has a magnificent chapter on the sanctity of truth in his little book Principles of Conduct. And Murray takes the position that Rahab was not justified in her lying, that lying, according to Murray, is never permitted, and that Rahab is exalted to the roll call of the heroines and heroes of faith in the book of Hebrews, not because of her deception, not because of her lie, but in spite of it, but that she is recognized as a woman of faith because she embraced the God of Israel in spite of her background, in spite of her own religious culture, and she risked her entire life to protect these men as an act of faith. And often as new converts tend to be, there's all kinds of baggage that is brought into the newly converted life, and we don't get sanctified overnight, and this is just another case of the Bible painting the portraits of their heroes and heroines, warts and all. And so, John Murray's position, which I respect incidentally very much, would say that Rahab was blessed in spite of her lie, not because of it. Now, I'm not sure I'd agree with Murray, and this causes no amount of consternation sometimes when I talk about this.

In fact, the last time I talked about it, I got several letters from people. One person even pronounced a curse on me for suggesting that it's okay to disobey God and calling evil good and so on. But the issue is not as easy to divide as it may seem at first glance, because the text here does not say that God approved of her lying, nor does the text of Hebrews say that God approved of her lying, nor does the text of Hebrews or of Joshua say that God disapproved of her lying, and so we can't settle it simply on the basis of what is explicitly said here in the text. When you look at other similar episodes that are contained in the Scripture, we may be inclined to take a different position from that taken by Dr. Murray.

For example, to me, the greatest theologian I've ever known is John Gerstner, a man with the most scrupulous personal ethic that I've ever met, was John Gerstner. And Gerstner took the position that Rahab's lie in this situation was a virtue. Now, the case that he makes for that rests on some other episodes in the Bible, most notably, for example, the record that we have in the first chapter of the book of Exodus when we remember the situation there where the Pharaoh had decreed that the newly born Hebrew male infants should be put to death. And we read in chapter 1, verse 15 of Exodus, the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shippur and the name of the other Puah, and said, When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him, and if it is a daughter, then you shall live. Now, here is a case where the king or the Pharaoh is commanding Hebrew people, the midwives, to commit murder.

He is issued a murderous decree. He's commanding them to do something he's commanding them to do something that God forbids. But we're told in verse 17, But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.

Now, there there's no great dispute about the ethics of that, of their right of civil disobedience. Not only may they disobey the Pharaoh in this case, but they must because Pharaoh is commanding them to do something God forbids. And we are told that these women feared God, so instead of killing the babies, they saved them. So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this thing and saved the male children alive? And the midwives said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's a lie. They lied to Pharaoh. They lied to Pharaoh not simply to protect themselves, but to protect the babies from murder.

Now we read in verse 20, Therefore, Now what does the word therefore signify but a conclusion that is drawn from the preceding premises? Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them.

There's no, not the slightest hint of disapproval here by God of the action of the midwives. On the contrary, we are told that it is precisely because of their actions and that they were people who feared God, who were models of good conscience and good behavior that God pronounced His blessing on them. Now this is what has made theologians historically who hold to biblical inerrancy, who hold to moral absolutes and all of that, say that there is an occasion or two when it is permitted to deceive, where the purpose of deceit is not to enrich oneself or to harm another person, but the purpose of the deceit is to save a life in the case of attempted murder or in the case of in the case specifically of warfare. The great moral theologians of Christian history have often come to the conclusion that warfare allows and requires acts of deception for the war to be carried out. For an example, another portion in Scripture where we see this is in the great military victory of Gideon. Now Gideon didn't orally speak lies to his enemies, but the whole victory came as a result of a massive deception. Now the question is, was Gideon required by God in light of the sanctity of the truth to let his clear intentions be known to the enemy rather than to deceive them by the jars and the noise and all of the stuff that they did? It's almost like the kind of thing you see in competitive contests in our own days of football games, which are kind of mini replicas of war.

You have an offense and you have a defense, and the offensive coordinator doesn't announce to the defensive coordinator what play he's calling, and he tries to camouflage the moves that he's taking so that the quarterback may fake a handoff to the running back, roll out on a play-action pass, and throw the ball, hoping by his fake and his faint that he can draw the defense to the person who's not actually carrying the ball, and so on. Now here we understand that no ethical principle has been violated by an intentional act of deception, but that's a game. War is not a game, and murder is not a game. Now I could be wrong on this, and I hope if you disagree with me on it you won't get all upset about it and just understand that this is a very difficult problem to deal with in light of Scripture and how warfare and the saving of lives has a role to play in our moral responsibilities.

I've come to the conclusion, I'm open to change, that God actually approves people risking their lives to save other people's lives by acts of deception such as were committed here by Rahab. But in any case, let's read the rest of the story. 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. Again, this is part of the deception. And then we have parenthetically the statement in verse 6, But she had brought them up to the roof, and hidden them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order on the roof.

This is an interesting thing. There are these soldiers. Talk about hiding beneath the skirts of a woman. Their rescue depends upon the wits of Rahab, and Rahab takes her to her roof, and these and these guys have to hide under this flax that's being dried up there on her roof.

I get a kick out of that particular portion of the story. Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan, to the fords. And as soon as those who had pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate. Now verse 8, Before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, Then 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. I mean, keep in mind now that the people in Jericho were not ignorant of what was about to transpire. They had the reports of their own scouts of this massing of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people on the other side of the Jordan River. They had heard the legendary stories of the incredible power of their God, how He had defeated the Egyptians. And if you think the Jews were afraid of the Canaanites, think of the fear that was in the hearts of the Canaanites as they heard all of these horror stories about this army that was about to invade them. And so Rahab says this to the spies, saying, Our hearts have been terrified by what has taken place already, 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.

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 of heaven above and on earth beneath. This is an incredible profession of faith. Going beyond the henotheism that was practiced in the ancient Near East, where people believed that each nation had their own individual God, and she's acknowledging here that Yahweh is not merely the God of the Jews, but that He is the God of heaven and earth, and that He is her God. Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the Lord, since I've shown you kindness, that you will also 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 they have, and deliver our lives from death. And so she asks them to make a pledge for her family's safety. And so in verse 14 we read, The men answered her, 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. And she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall. And she said, Get to the mountain, hide there three days, and afterwards you may go your way. So the men said to her, We will be blameless of this oath of yours, which you have made us wear, 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 and mother, your brothers, and all your father's household to your home, so shall it be that whoever goes outside the doors of your house, his blood shall be in his head, and we will be guiltless. But whoever is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him.

And so she dismissed them and hung the scarlet cord in her window. No matter the conclusion we reach regarding Rahab's lying, this is one of the greatest stories of salvation and restoration in Scripture. An immoral woman comes to faith in the God of Israel and goes on to be in the lineage of the Messiah. It reveals so much about the forgiveness and redemption available to all who believe. We've heard a message from the book of Joshua today here on Renewing Your Mind.

Each Saturday we're making our way through Dr. R.C. Sproul's series on this book. If you'd like to continue your study, we'll send you all ten messages. Just contact us and request The Book of Joshua on MP3 CD for your donation of any amount.

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You can subscribe when you go to tabletopmagazine.com. Before we go, here's a final thought from Dr. Sproul. I don't think that the descriptive terms here of the departure of the spies from the home of Rahab after Rahab had exacted an oath from them to protect her family, I don't think it's by accident that this story has such close parallels to the story of the Passover in the book of Exodus, where the angel of the Lord who was coming to wreak havoc on the Egyptian nation was to pass over all of the Jewish people who remained in their homes and who marked their doors with the blood of the Lamb. So, in like manner, there is to be a Passover in the conquest of Canaan, that this army of God would bring no harm to a house that was marked by the scarlet thread. In all of this, beloved, we see a typological forecast, a foreshadowing of the atonement itself, of the blood of Christ that marks those who are covered from the wrath of God, and all who find their refuge in that place marked by His blood have nothing to fear from God's divine judgment. And this is being dramatized, I believe, not only in the Passover of the Old Testament, but in the scarlet cord that marked the house of Rahab. So,