Reconnoitring Rahab

Comparative commentary by Devon Abts

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The story of Rahab is recorded in Joshua 2:1–21 and 6:17, 22–25. During a reconnaissance mission to Jericho, two Israelite spies enter the house of Rahab (2:1), a sex worker who lives at the outermost edge of the Canaanite city (v15). She welcomes the spies into her home (v.2), confesses faith in their God (vv.9–11), and secures her family’s protection in exchange for helping them escape (vv.12–14). After the siege of Jericho, Rahab and her family are brought safely from the ruined city and placed ‘outside the camp of Israel’ (6:23). The author of Joshua adds that her family remains in Israel to this day, ‘for she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho’ (v.25).

A Gentile woman by birth and plucky brothel-keeper by profession, Rahab is the unlikeliest of biblical heroines. Yet the drama of her story has captivated the imagination of Jewish and Christian readers alike. According to rabbinic tradition, she married Joshua and became a progenitor of a prominent line of Hebrew prophets, including Jeremiah (Baskin 1979: 146). She earns a place in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (1:5), and the New Testament authors credit her as an exemplar of both faith (Hebrews 11:31) and works (James 2:25). Building on this scriptural tradition, the Church Fathers praise Rahab’s courage in showing hospitality towards the Jews and faith in their God (e.g., Clement of Alexandria, 1 Clement 12; Augustine, Contra Mendacium). For centuries, her story has been read as illustrative of ‘the marvellous purposes of God in working through unexpected agents to bring his plan of salvation to fruition’ (Sharp 2004: 630).

Significantly, however, this biblical narrative also has a darker, more sinister side. Viewed through a postcolonial lens Rahab appears, not as a heroic Gentile convert, but as a willing participant in the genocide of her own people (Sharp 2004: 631–33). Under threat of foreign invasion, she willingly colludes with the conquerors; and in return, she and her family are permanently placed ‘outside the camp of Israel’ (Joshua 6:23).

Such contemporary perspectives can make familiar discourses seem strange—and in so doing, these postcolonial readings allow us to see the story of Rahab with fresh eyes. In the same way, each of the three artworks in this exhibition invites us to read the biblical text in a new light.

Created at the dawn of the modern Zionist movement, Ephraim Moses Lilien’s engraving is part of a series of illustrations the artist made to accompany a set of poems composed by his friend and creative collaborator, Börries von Münchhausen. The organic, energetic forms of Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) offered Lilien an ideal visual language to express his longing for the renewal of an authentically modern Jewish culture. It is unlikely that a cultural Zionist such as Lilien intended this artwork as a piece of political propaganda. However, when viewed through a postcolonial lens, his depiction of Rahab raises some disturbing questions about her fate in the biblical text. What is the cost of her willing submission to the invading powers?

At first glance, Khaled Jarrar’s enormous concrete sculptures may not seem to offer any substantial commentary on Rahab’s story. Yet if we read her narrative with this work in mind, several parallels begin to emerge. Like Jarrar, the biblical figure of Rahab defies the colonial logic of walling. Her brothel—built into the very walls of Jericho (2:15)—is a haven of hospitality for strangers and outsiders. In welcoming the Israelite spies and professing faith in their God, she ‘successfully moves the border between herself and the spies, between self and other’ (Gillmayr-Bucher 2007: 145). Each time he takes a hammer to the separation wall, Jarrar undermines the barriers that separate families, friends, and neighbours. In repurposing the wall, the artist invites his viewers to transcend the psychological barriers of their colonized imaginations and to recognize humanity’s essential interdependence. Perhaps this, too, is a part of Rahab’s legacy.

If Lilien’s artwork illuminates Rahab’s violent domestication, and Jarrar elucidates a Rahab who refuses to be domesticated, what insights might we glean from the tranquil domesticity of Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s self-portrait?

Like Jarrar’s sculptures, this painting was not conceived as a response to the biblical text. However, in offering a constructive vision of her own hybridity, Akunyili Crosby invites us to consider how identities take shape under circumstances of cultural collision. Moreover, the hospitality of her work invites the modern reader of the Bible to consider how she might foster a hospitable discourse around Rahab. Like so many favourite biblical figures, Rahab asks to be considered from multiple angles. How might we, as interpreters of Scripture, enter into dialogue with those who see her from a different perspective?

 

References

Dube, Musa. 2000. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Danvers: Chalice Press)

Gossman, Lionel. 2004. ‘Jugendstil in Firestone: The Jewish Illustrator E.M. Lilien (1874–1925)’, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, 66: 11–76

Pui-Lan, Kwok. 2006. ‘Sexual Morality and National Politics: Reading Biblical “Loose Women”’, in Engaging the Bible: Critical Readings from Contemporary Women, ed. by Choi Hee An and Katheryn Pfisterer Darrby (Minneapolis: Fortress Press)

Gillmayr-Bucher, Susan. 2007. ‘“She Came to Test Him with Hard Questions”: Foreign Women and Their View on Israel’, Biblical Interpretation, 15.2: 135–50

Sharp, Carolyn. 2008. Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press)

______. 2012. ‘“Are You For Us, or For Our Adversaries?”: A Feminist and Postcolonial Interrogation of Joshua 2–12 for the Contemporary Church’, Interpretation 66.2: 141–52

See full exhibition for Joshua 2:1–24; 6:22–25

Joshua 2:1–24; 6:22–25

Revised Standard Version

Joshua 2

2 And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went, and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and lodged there. 2And it was told the king of Jericho, “Behold, certain men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.” 3Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring forth the men that have come to you, who entered your house; for they have come to search out all the land.” 4But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them; and she said, “True, men came to me, but I did not know where they came from; 5and when the gate was to be closed, at dark, the men went out; where the men went I do not know; pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.” 6But she had brought them up to the roof, and hid them with the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof. 7So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords; and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.

8 Before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, 9and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. 10For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. 11And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no courage left in any man, because of you; for the Lord your God is he who is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. 12Now then, swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a sure sign, 13and save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” 14And the men said to her, “Our life for yours! If you do not tell this business of ours, then we will deal kindly and faithfully with you when the Lord gives us the land.”

15 Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she dwelt in the wall. 16And she said to them, “Go into the hills, lest the pursuers meet you; and hide yourselves there three days, until the pursuers have returned; then afterward you may go your way.” 17The men said to her, “We will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours which you have made us swear. 18Behold, when we come into the land, you shall bind this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down; and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household. 19If any one goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we shall be guiltless; but if a hand is laid upon any one who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. 20But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath which you have made us swear.” 21And she said, “According to your words, so be it.” Then she sent them away, and they departed; and she bound the scarlet cord in the window.

22 They departed, and went into the hills, and remained there three days, until the pursuers returned; for the pursuers had made search all along the way and found nothing. 23Then the two men came down again from the hills, and passed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun; and they told him all that had befallen them. 24And they said to Joshua, “Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands; and moreover all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of us.”

22 And Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the harlot’s house, and bring out from it the woman, and all who belong to her, as you swore to her.” 23So the young men who had been spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father and mother and brothers and all who belonged to her; and they brought all her kindred, and set them outside the camp of Israel. 24And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. 25But Rahab the harlot, and her father’s household, and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive; and she dwelt in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

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