Joshua03

Joshua 2:1-14

RAHAB’S FAITH

1.  Joshua sent two spies into Jericho to look over the land.  Ironically, some forty years earlier, Joshua himself was sent in to spy out the land (Numbers, Chapters 13 & 14.)

If you have time, read Numbers, Chapters 13 & 14.  Create your own summary of these two chapters.  Understanding the events described therein will be helpful throughout the study of Joshua.

The events that followed the expedition of the twelve spies, told in these chapters of Numbers, were some of the gravest in the history of the Nation of Israel.

What do these two spy expeditions, forty years apart, have in common, and how do they differ?

2.  As our two spies here fulfill their mission, a series of events takes place in Jericho that are too unlikely to call coincidences.

            a)  Of all places the spies could have gone, they enter an inn that was built into the perimeter wall of the city, the home of a prostitute named Rahab.

            b)  Somehow the king of Jericho found out about these spies, and sent a posse to capture them.

            c)  Rahab, a prostitute, who had probably never done a noble thing in her life, risked her life to hide these two spies, and lied to the king’s posse, telling them the spies had left.

We know that God felt the entire population of Jericho was evil, and He was about to have the city and its inhabitants completely destroyed.

How do you explain these unlikely events, and what possessed Rahab to suddenly become righteous?

3.  What lesson do we learn from Rahab’s faith and fear?

4.  Aside from these few verses in Chapter 2 of Joshua, the Old Testament is silent about the fate of Rahab.  Fourteen hundred years later, a tax collector-turned-author, reveals God’s ultimate reason for sparing Rahab’s life.  Read Matthew 1:5 and explain how this verse in the New Testament adds an even deeper meaning to the events in Jericho.