Jericho was a condemned city.
God had given the land of Canaan to Israel, and Jericho stood in the way. The entire city — every man, woman, and child — was under God’s judgment. No one inside those walls had any reason to expect mercy.
And inside those walls lived a prostitute named Rahab.
The Scripture does not soften what she was. Every time it mentions her — in Joshua, in Hebrews, in James — it calls her “Rahab the harlot.” The text does not clean her up. It does not explain how she got there. It simply tells you who she was and then shows you what God did with her.
Joshua sent two spies into Jericho, and they came to Rahab’s house (Joshua 2:1). When the king of Jericho heard that Israelite spies had entered the city, he sent men to her door demanding she hand them over. She had already hidden them on her roof under stalks of flax. She told the king’s men that the spies had left, and sent them chasing in the wrong direction (Joshua 2:4-7).
Then she went up to the roof and told the spies something no one in Jericho would have expected to hear — least of all from her.
“I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt… When we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (Joshua 2:9-11).
The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.
Everyone in Jericho had heard the same stories. Everyone knew what God had done at the Red Sea. Everyone’s heart had melted. But Rahab was the only one who acted on it. She was the only one who looked at the evidence and reached the right conclusion — and then risked everything on it.
She asked the spies to spare her life and the lives of her family when Israel came. They agreed. They told her to tie a scarlet cord in her window so that when the city fell, her household would be saved (Joshua 2:18).
And Israel came.
The walls of Jericho fell. The city was destroyed. Every living thing in it was put under the ban — devoted to destruction.
Except Rahab.
“However, Rahab the harlot and her father’s household and all she had, Joshua spared; and she has lived in the midst of Israel to this day, for she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho” (Joshua 6:25).
She lived in the midst of Israel from that day forward. A Canaanite prostitute from a destroyed city, taken in among God’s people.
She married a man named Salmon. She bore a son named Boaz.
Boaz. The same Boaz who would one day see a Moabite widow gleaning at the edges of his field and show her kindness. The same Boaz who told Ruth, “May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.” The man who showed mercy to a foreigner was raised by a woman who had been shown mercy herself.
Rahab’s son married Ruth. Ruth bore Obed. Obed fathered Jesse. Jesse fathered David.
And when Matthew recorded the genealogy of Jesus Christ, he placed them side by side:
“Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth” (Matthew 1:5).
A prostitute and a foreigner. Side by side. In the lineage of the Son of God.
God’s purposes are not limited by your past. They never have been. The woman in all of Scripture with the most reason to believe God could never use her — that she was too far gone, too stained by the life she had lived — is the one He placed in the family line of Jesus Christ.
He didn’t wait for her to become someone else. He saw a woman who believed.
And that was enough.