The Scarlet Rope in the Window

Moses was dead, and for thirty days God's people cried for him beside the Jordan River. Then God told Joshua, their new leader, "Be strong and very brave. I will be with you, just as I was with Moses."

So Joshua sent two spies across the river to look at Jericho.

Jericho had high stone walls, and some houses were built right into the wall. In one of them lived a woman named Rahab. She was not married, but men paid to visit her as if she were their wife, and everyone in town knew it. That evening the two spies slipped in at her door.

Somebody saw. Soon there was pounding on that door.

"Bring out those men!" shouted the king's messengers. "They have come to spy out the land!"

Rahab had already hidden the spies on her flat roof, under stalks of flax spread out to dry. (Flax is a plant people used for making cloth. It also makes a very good spy blanket.)

"Yes, two men came," Rahab said, "but I didn't know where they were from. They left at dark, just before the gate shut. Hurry! You can still catch them!"

Off ran the messengers, all the way to the river crossings. They found plenty of river. They did not find any spies.

Then Rahab climbed up to the roof.

"I know the LORD has given you this land," she whispered. "We heard how he dried up the Red Sea for you. Everyone in Jericho is shaking with fear. The LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. So promise me, by the LORD, that you will save my father and mother and my brothers and sisters."

"Our lives for yours!" said the spies. "Keep our secret, and we will be kind and faithful to you."

Rahab's back window looked straight down the outside of the wall, a handy thing when spies need to leave in a hurry. She let them down on a rope, and they swung and bumped their way down the stones in the dark.

"Tie this scarlet cord in this window," they called up to her. "Bring your whole family inside. Everyone in your house will be safe."

As soon as they were gone, Rahab tied the red cord in her window.

Soon God brought his people across the Jordan, and they marched around Jericho for seven days. On the seventh day they shouted, and the walls fell down flat. "Bring out Rahab and her family," Joshua told the two spies, "just as you promised." The spies went into the house with the red cord and brought them out. Everyone else in Jericho was killed that day. Only Rahab's family lived, and they made their home among God's people.

A red cord could keep one house safe on one day. It could not keep Rahab from growing old, or save anyone outside her door.

Rahab married an Israelite named Salmon, and their son Boaz became the great-grandfather of King David. Kings came and went, and the family kept waiting for the King God had promised.

He was born, at last, into Rahab's own family. Soldiers threw a scarlet robe over his shoulders and laughed at him. The spies had said "our lives for yours" and gone home safe. This King gave his life for ours. He died on a cross so that outsiders from every city on earth could be brought in safe, like Rahab. On the third day he rose again.

His name is Jesus, and Rahab's name is written in his family tree.