RAHAB, properly RACHAB (2111, large; Sept.
"Pax0), a woman of Jericho who received into her house the two spies who were sent by Joshua into that city ; concealed them under the flax laid out upon the house-top, when they were sought after ; and, having given them important informa tion, which showed that the inhabitants were much disheartened at the miracles which had at tended the march of the Israelites, enabled them to escape over the wall of the town, upon which her dwelling was situated. For this important service Rahab and her kindred were saved by the Hebrews from the general massacre which fol lowed the taking of Jericho (Josh. ii. I-2I ; vi. 17; comp. Heb xi. 31).
In the narrative of these transactions Rahab is called nnT, zonal:, which our own, after the ancient versions, renders harlot.' The Jewish writers, however, being unwilling to entertain the idea of their ancestors being involved in a disreputable association at the commencement of their great undertaking, chose to interpret the word hostess,' one who keeps a public-house, as if from ill, to nourish' (Joseph. Antiq. v. 1; ii. and vii. ; comp. the Targum, and Kimchi and Jarchi on the text). Christian interpreters also are inclined to adopt this interpretation for the sake of the character of a woman of whom the Apostle speaks well, and who would appear from Matt. i. 4 to have become by a subsequent marriage with Salmon, prince of Judah, an ancestress of Jesus. But we must be content to take facts as they stand, and not strain them to meet difficulties ; and it is now universally admitted by every sound Hebrew scholar that i'011 means harlot,' and not hostess.' It signifies harlot in every other text where it occurs, the idea of hostess' not being represented by this or any other word in Hebrew, as the function represented by it did not exist. There were no inns ; and when certain substitutes for inns eventually came into use, they were never, in any Eastern country, kept by women. On the other hand, strangers
from beyond the river might have repaired to the house of a harlot without suspicion or remark.. The Bedouins from the desert constantly do so at this day in their visits to Cairo and Baghdad. The house of such a woman was also the only one to which they, as perfect strangers, could have had access, and certainly the only one in which they could calculate on obtaining the information they required without danger from male inmates. This concurrence of analogies in the word, in the thing, and in the probability of circumstances, ought to settle the question. If we are concerned for the morality of Rahab, the best proof of her reforma tion is found in the fact of her subsequent marriage to Salmon : this implies her previous conversion to Judaism, for which indeed her discourse with the spies evinces that she was prepared. The Jewish writers abound in praises of Rahab, on ac count of the great service she rendered their ances tors. Even those who do not deny that she was a harlot, admit that she eventually became the wife of a prince of Israel, and that many great persons of their nation sprang from this union. The general statement is, that she was ten years of age at the time the Hebrews quitted Egypt, that she played the harlot during all the forty years they were in the wilderness, that she became a proselyte when the spies were received by her, and that after the fall of Jericho no less a personage than Joshua himself made her his wife. She is also counted as an ancestress of Jeremiah, Maaseiah, Hanameel, Shallum, Baruch, Ezekiel, Neriah, Seriah, and Huldah the prophetess. (See T. Babyl. tit. Megilla, fol. 14, col. 2 ; yuchasin, x. i ; Shalshalet Hakabala, vii. 2 ; Abarbanel, Kimehi, etc., on Josh. vi. 25 ; Mitzvoth Toreh, p. 112 ; Lightfoot, Hon Heb. ad Matt. i. 4 ; Meuschen, N. T. 7171muel, p. 40).—J. K.