Rahab

Rahab was a Canaanite woman living in Jericho whose decision to shelter Israelite spies, at significant personal risk, spared her family from the city's destruction and placed her within the genealogy of Jesus.

Joshua 2:1 introduces her when Joshua sends two spies into Jericho to assess the city before Israel's planned attack. They lodge at Rahab's house, and when the king of Jericho learns of it and demands she surrender them, she instead hides them and sends the king's men on a false trail.

Rahab's reasoning for helping them is recorded directly: she tells the spies that news of Israel's God, parting the Red Sea and defeating other nations, had already reached Jericho, and that "the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath" (Joshua 2:11). Her actions are rooted in a genuine, stated conviction, not mere self-preservation alone.

In exchange for her protection, Rahab asks the spies to spare her family when Israel takes the city, and they agree, instructing her to mark her house with a scarlet cord as a sign for the invading army to recognize and pass over.

When Jericho falls in Joshua 6, Rahab and her family are the one household spared from the city's destruction, exactly as promised, and she is recorded as living among the Israelites from that point forward.

The New Testament returns to Rahab twice, each time highlighting a different dimension of her story. Hebrews 11:31 lists her among the heroes of faith, noting she "perished not with them that believed not," crediting her survival to genuine faith rather than mere fortunate timing.

James, writing about faith demonstrated through action, cites Rahab specifically as an example of faith proven by works, "when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way" (James 2:25), her hidden risk-taking treated as evidence of real conviction, not empty belief.

Matthew's genealogy of Jesus names Rahab directly, a former Canaanite associated with Jericho's destruction becoming, through marriage into Israel, an ancestor of both King David and, generations later, Jesus Himself.