Hebrews 11: Jericho (2)

By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace.

Note that the two incidents cited in Hebrews 11:30-31 are listed in reverse order.

we should note that the spy incident with Rahab happened first, then the collapsing of the wall.

The focal point is not on the incident of the spies coming in Joshua 2, but the fact that when the walls fell in verse 30, they did not kill Rahab. Rahab was trusting in God to deliver her in the midst of the battle, in the midst of YHWH’s conquest of the land of Canaan for Israel. In essence we have Hebraic phrasing here that is pointing out two connected events that expand on the single event. The walls came down and Rahab was preserved by God. Put another way - God conquered Jericho for Israel, and God preserved Rahab for Israel. The fall of Jericho was about fulfilling the promises of God for the future of Israel; the preservation of Rahab was also about fulfilling the promises of God for the future of Israel.

You see, God planned to have Israel be blessed through the person and lineage of Rahab. Did you know that Rahab is in the direct lineage of David? Let’s look at it. Even though they know this fact, they may not actually have fully connected the dots, as it were.

Here is the close view of the lineage, the family tree, or the family of Rahab

Notice that Rahab marries Salmon.

Her son is Boaz, who, as we know is the predominate Jewish male character in the story of Ruth, who holds the right of kinsman redeemer, for Ruth’s dead husband Mahlon the son of Naomi and Elimelech. It turns out that Boaz not only redeems the property of their tribe, but he also recognizes the gentile Ruth who left behind everything to follow Naomi back to her country of Israel, to make Nami’s people her people, and most importantly to make Naoimi’s God her own God.

Now I don’t know how much it might contribute to

This means that Rahab is the mother in law of Ruth.

The son of Boaz and Ruth is Obed.

Obed is the father of Jesse - who is the father of David.

So - David’s great grandmother is Ruth, and his great-great grandmother is Rahab.

WOW!!

No wonder David is so closely acquainted with the concept of the grace of God, and the friendship of God. We must think that the familial cycle of personal stories about the faithfulness of God, were very close. More importantly there is a close generational reliance upon the words of God to the exclusion of all else.

And just to give you a visual perspective - these are all also in the lineage of Joseph and Mary, providing the blood descent and legal descent of Jesus. Both of the the separate lines are descended through David, and thus through Ruth and Rahab. 26 Generations after David are Joseph and Mary - each through quite distinct lines of inheritance, with distinct lineal stories and blessings vs. cursing. Meaning that Christ would be the perfect seed of David, in every sense.

Also, before we get going through the text, I want to show you the geographical scene, and discuss that a little bit.

Here is what the geography looks like:

God has Israel camped out on the east side of the Jordan River Valley, and Jericho is all of the way on the west side of the Jordan River Valley. The River runs from North to south through the valley, and the fertile grounds are on both side of the Jordan.

It will turn out that Jericho will be in the territory of Benjamin, after the land is allocated. Here is a picture of the 12 tribes as they were spread across this small piece of land - the land of Canaan.

Here is the land under the reign of Solomon.

And Back to the Israel that the Hebrews held after the exodus. The actual promised land running from the Nile River to the Euphrates River is about the size of two of the state of Texas. Now current Israel, the occupied territory is about the size of New Jersey. So - that would be about 70 times larger than what it is now. New Jersey will fit into Texas approximately 35 times.

Now we zoom into the area where Jericho is .

The grey section here right in the middle of the land 1/2 of the land of Israel is above, and 1/2 of the land is below. You can see Shittim, where the nation was camped out while scouting the land again. You can see where Jericho is. And here is where future Jerusalem will be.

God has established the perfect place to begin the conquest of the land - the walled city of Jericho in the midst of the land. The most impossible city to take by seige in all of the land. An extraordinarily well prepared city to hold up against any seige. We will get into that more in a bit.

The message will go out far and wide. Everyone is already aware that God rescued Israel from Egypt, and overthrew the Pharaoh's armies. They have been circling in the wilderness. Everyone in Canaan has heard that Israel intends to take and inhabit the land of promise. The pressure has been building, and building, and building.

Now the time has arrived - how long will the seige take? Months? Years? Every eye is watching and every ear is listening for news of Israel.

Now I had you watch a video while I was out with Covid for those two weeks, from a Dr. Bryant Wood, in which he addressed Jericho.

were there any major take-a-ways for you?

It turns out that Jericho is the 2nd most excavated spot in Israel, second only to Jerusalem.

Dr. Bryant Wood presented some of the findings about Jericho, as excavated at Tell es-Sultan, which is universally acknowledged as Jericho. Here is a modern picture.

Here is a close-up overhead view.

Here is a summary of the most salient footnotes that I found in that video

Dr Wood indicated that John Darstang and Kathleen Kenyan are the pre-eminent archaeologists who oversaw the most significant digs, and published the most impactful findings. But there have been a lot of other very technical digs, and a number of contributors who have followed.

Kathleen Kenyon has dominated the archaeology in this location at and her findings have been used to bully/intimidate the archaeological and biblical archaeology community ever since.

Kenyon, who came after Darstang claims that there was no late bronze city on or around the tel of Jericho, from the Hicksos or Canaanite land.

however the Canaanite pottery alone discovered by John Darstang irrefutably puts the excavation at 1450-1400 BC vs. the dates of 1650-1550 BC given by Kenyan, who did not examine any of the local Canaanite pottery found at the dig. She looked for the imported and expensive and date-able foreign pottery and ignored the actual pottery finds. She was not an expert in pottery and dating. But because she found none of the easily date-able foreign pottery, she decided this tel pre-dated the bronze age which would have been consistent wit the bible, and set her early date. As this was the only major destruction/fire in the excavation - she decided it was different than the Jericho event, and that the Jericho event never happened.

We do have some inside reports from some people who worked on that excavation, as John Page has mentioned previously, Dr. Glen Carnegie, from within the grace categorical movement has purportedly asserted that Dr. Kenyon intentionally put into storage pottery that went against her assertions of the age of the city in the dig.

Flood stage was the Spring of 1406 BC, the waters were damned up to Adam, 15 miles up the Jordan river from Jericho

There is a strong underground Spring at the SE corner of the city - it has always been an inhabited oasis. Throughout history.

It is built on a hill with a deep slope, which the Canaanites used to build a fortification system with a large 20 foot wall resting on a 10-15 foot retaining wall which was tied to the bedrock below. this created a 30-40 foot high outer wall, at the bottom of a steep rampart, leading to the upper wall. The construction of the fortification system was dated to 1500 BC, again showing the correct dating.

As Dr. Bryant Wood, pointed out, the Hebrew in the passage in Joshua literally says that the walls fell beneath themselves, down the hill. This is significant as it has long been understood that the walls fell flat, which is the word תַּ֫חַת , TAHAT, or underneath, or metonymy, that which is underneath, which in turn has been understood to mean to be reduced to what is underneath - i.e. the foundation. However, the correct interpretation would be to mean that which is downhill-underneath, or at a lower level that is under the level.

In other words, the walls all fell down the hill.

Here is a drawing of the Tell, showing where John Garstang excavated in the area outlined as A, and Kenyon excavated in the area outlined as B

Now in this diagram you can see the walled system all laid out. It consists of an imposing lower wall, then a rampart that runs at about a 40 degree angle uphill, and is plastered over, which prevents any erosion of the soil that might undermine the wall structure. And at the top is the upper wall. These walls are all constructed of a stone-mud combination. We might compare it to primitive cement, so a mud that is mixed to provide binding of the stones, and hardens into an impervious wall.

I found an explanation of a similar rampart that was discovered at Tell-Dan which is way north of Jericho. Here is an excerpt from

The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan, John C. H. Laughlin, BAR 7:05, Sep-Oct 1981.

“One of the most formidable features of Tel Dan—a 50-acre mound—is a massive rampart that surrounds most of the tel. Biran has expended enormous effort over the years trying to understand this rampart. Massive ramparts are common features surrounding Palestinian cities in the Middle Bronze Age. The rampart at Dan—or Laish, as it was then called—was by no means unique. It is generally thought that these ramparts were a defensive response to the invention of the battering ram. However, this is a much-disputed question; eminent archaeologists are still in disagreement as to just why these ramparts were built.

… then

The outer layer of the rampart was plastered with crushed travertine to prevent erosion of the slope. The plaster was not only impermeable to water, but it also stabilized a steep, smooth, hazardous slope which would cause an enemy to think twice before attacking the city. The builders of the rampart apparently considered a slope of about 40 degrees ideal.”

Now based on the narrative of the story, and a view of the situation on the ground at Tell el-Sultan, we can understand that Rahab’s house was built against the wall. The Northern side of the city wall was shown to not have fallen with the rest of the wall structure, so we conclude that is where her home was.

Here is a picture that comes the closest that I found to depicting the walled system:

It takes about a 1/2 hour, by the way to walk around the outer wall, with about 6 acres inside the protected/walled portion of the city.

These archaeological conclusions that he presented, and which we reviewed today, are still not fully accepted by a lot of liberals because their presupposition is that God really didn't do anything supernatural – you can’t prove that. There were no miracles, they will say. Then of course you have the minimalists who try to say that there's no evidence of Jews at all in the land until much, much later. They want to say that the House of David was mythical and other attempts at refuting the historicity of the bible.

‎So these guys have done a tremendous service I think in demonstrating how archaeology done correctly really does show (demonstrates, substantiate) the claims that we have in Scripture.

‎So last time we got started in the book of Joshua itself. Now remember that Joshua is about conquest. The focus in Hebrew 11 is on “by faith” – by faith, by faith, by faith. The faith as I’ve said again and again is demonstrably bible doctrine resident in the soul, or as we are now calling it functional bible doctrine in the soul. Faith is never placed in some sort of abstract principle or some generalization; but rather what God is reminding us is that their faith was always focused on specific revelation and in almost all of these examples (at least from Abraham on), the focus is on the revelation of truth, or doctrine as we tend to call it, that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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‎So here we have in Joshua 1:3-5 the promise that God makes to Joshua as he takes over the leadership of the Israelites to lead them into the land and to lead the conquest.

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‎God states in Joshua 1:3-5

Joshua 1:3–5 NKJV

Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.

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‎Now this is a tremendous promise to Joshua. Remember Joshua was one of the two spies that 40 years earlier had refused to be terrified by the giants in the land, by the walled cities and by the numerous people. He knew that God could deliver them and so his faith is only strengthened over the last 40 years; but he has this specific promise to go on that no matter what they faced, no matter what armies they faced, no matter what fortified cities they might face God is going to provide for them and God is going to give them the land that He has promised them. This promise goes back to passages such as Deuteronomy 1:7-8 where in verse 8 God stated to Moses and Moses stated to the people just before they went into the land:

‎NKJ Deuteronomy 1:8

Deuteronomy 1:8 NKJV

See, I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—to give to them and their descendants after them.’

‎So that Abrahamic Covenant or promise from God is the basis for the whole book of Joshua. In fact it becomes a foundation for understanding almost everything that happens to Israel during the subsequent centuries. It is the Abrahamic Covenant that lays the foundation for the rest of human history since the Abrahamic Covenant because that will then be the basis for God restoring the land to Israel in the future, establishing the Messianic Kingdom and the land that God promised to Abraham. So everything goes back to understanding the Abraham Covenant and its permanence.

‎Now at the time that Moses dies, he goes up on Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is located here. You can see the black arrow over here. That is located in the Transjordan area east of the Jordan in what is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Actually it's only about - maybe 25, 30, 40 miles from the crossing of the Jordan River here. Mt. Nebo is where Moses left – went up to the top of Mt. Nebo and where he died.

‎The Israelites are camped down in this lower area on the plains of Moab. They will get up; go down to the Jordan, and there God will direct them to be led by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant. The water will not stop flowing until they put their foot down to actually take a step into the river. So that must have called for tremendous amount of trust in the Lord that He would cause that water to stop because everything in their being would have told them that water’s still coming. All the way down as their feet were just above the water, the water receded.

‎Now there is a possible explanation that some people go to to explain what happened here and how this could conceivably have taken place via a natural cause and that the water stopped some 15 miles above the crossing point here.

‎In Joshua 3:16 we read:

Joshua 3:16 NKJV

that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho.

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‎Now there's a way in which God can cause something miraculous to happen via a natural cause. This doesn't diminish the miracle any because this happened exactly when the priests were putting their feet into the Jordan. But there have been known instances when the Jordan has been completely stopped for a period of time. The most recent time that occurred was back in the 1920’s when there was an earthquake in the area and it causes mud slides to occur in the area of the Jordan. The mud slides come down and block the river and in 1920 there's a recorded incident when this occurred. Mud slides blocked the river. The water completely stopped flowing for a little over 20 hours before it broke that earthen dam. So it's possible (conceivable) that that is one of the ways in which God caused this to happen through an intermediate means of a natural cause.

But it’s still every bit a miracle that it happened at the instant that the priest feet hit the ground. It is also interesting that at that moment there feet stepped on dry land, חרב, HARABA (HRB), to dry up, to be dried; it is the result of drought, heat, to make desolate by heat, or to lay to ruins by heat or fire. In other words: CRACK, CRACKLE, SNAP.

I’m not inclined to follow the earthquake explanation, as it is a retreat back to using naturalism as an explanation. Rather God could very easily have just stopped the water with an invisible wall and held it for the time being.

But this is an earthquake prone area where in the rift river valley (this gorge where the different plates) where the geological plates come together and so this is a an extremely earthquake prone area. It is possible that that might have come to play wherein God may have used an earthquake in bringing down the walls of Jericho.

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‎So the people are then crossing over to Jordan; and they're going to approach Jericho. Here we have Jericho just here. Jericho is less than 20 miles from the Jordan. So as they cross to Jordan the first thing they're going to do is head north to make camp at Gilgal.

‎You can be certain that the Canaanites had their spies out watching the movement of the Israelites as they were coming. They knew all of the stories about how they left Egypt. They've been waiting for them for 40 years because they have heard the rumors that their land is going to be taken. Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock. 40 years is a lifetime of expectation and fear - and now they are face to face with the God of Israel. So they are preparing themselves and fortifying themselves in Jericho. Jericho is the obvious spot to attack first as it is the crossroads for the North & South traffic, and the East and West traffic.

‎Now the territory around Jericho (at least today) is not very hospitable. This is a picture taken about 100 years ago in black and white giving you some idea of the of the background to the area and the excavations of the Tel on the northern end of Jericho. That's what it looked like 100 years ago; and you can see some of the walls here that are outlined and were first beginning to be excavated in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s. You can see how close the mountains are back behind to the North West.

Here is the more modern picture I showed before. The Tel-El-Sultan which is where the remains are is located right here. There’s a little contrast for you to see that. This is the area of the Old City of Jericho. It wasn’t very large. There were actually two walls. It’s up on a little bit of a hill. The inner part of the city (the upper city) covered about 6 or 7 acres. Then if you had the whole Tel itself, it covered about 9 acres.

‎At the time that the Israelites were coming, the people who farmed who lived outside of the city would have all come inside the city. So it's estimated that there were just several thousand people all within the fortification of Jericho (within the walls of the city of Jericho.)

‎Now lets go back to chapter 2 to pick up the initial reconnaissance that took place with the two spies and Rahab. As Joshua is crossing (getting ready to cross) the Jordan and preparing his assault on the land; he's going to send out two spies to form a reconnaissance to see what is going on and to get him some information. Now he's not making the mistake that the Jews made back at Kadesh Barnea. He's not sending out the spies to find out if they can do this; he is just getting information so that he understands the terrain, understands that people, and understands the fortification that are there. Also - he is not sending out 12 spies, as before to reconnoiter the whole land. So these two spies come to Jericho; and it is obvious that they're not Canaanites and they’re not from Jericho. And they are not very good at going into covert operations.

By the way - remember the first 12 spies 40 years ago? 10 came back with a bad report, and two came back with a good report? Those two spies - Caleb and Joshua? He is the same Joshua. He was a spy with a good report, and now he is the commander and leader of Israel who replaces Moses.

It’s funny how God does that.

Think of how he does that with us - and this is how leadership works; how God promotes us for spiritual service.

Also - be aware that Joshua is a picture of Christ.

‎It will be very quick that the King of Jericho is made aware that these men have come into the city to spy out the countryside and see the lay of the land. So they inform him that he is with Rahab who has called the harlot. At that time it was common for someone who perhaps ran some sort of a hostel or inn to provide services other than simply room and board. So that was her particular role.

Now, D. J. Wiseman, wrote something relevant in an article “Rahab of Jericho,” Tyndale Bulletin 14 (1964): 8–9.

“The two hebrew spies sent by Joshua from Shittim to gain information of the military, political and economic potential of the Jericho area came to that city and entered ‘the house of a harlot’ (bêṯ ’iššâ zônâ) whose name was Rahab and stayed there temporarily. It is evident that the ruler of Jericho had been informed of their arrival and was able to send direct to her house with a demand that they be brought out. Rahab freely admitted that the men had entered but protested affirming that they had left the city by the main gate before sundown. This explanation was accepted as if her word was customarily trusted, as indeed it was by the spies themselves.

Rahab lived in a house on the city wall, perhaps near the main gate. She was also a recognized member of her family group, a status not normally granted to a prostitute. She is depicted as a member of an industrious household having a knowledge of affairs beyond the city and national borders.

A parallel may be found in the inn-keeper of Old Babylonian times. The inn (bît sābî(ti)) was kept by a man or woman who was required to notify the palace of any stranger, especially one engaged in hostile activity, who might come to it. The laws of Eshnunna (§41) required the inn-keeper, who engaged in the conversion of commodities into local currency, to sell drink received from any foreigner, guest or temporary visitor, at the current market rate. In her rôle as a female small broker, she was prohibited, as was the merchant-banker, from receiving for trading silver, wool, barley or oil from any slave. Such transactions in basic commodities were controlled by the palace since the ‘inn’ was at this time the town’s link with the economy of other tribes or peoples. Since, by its nature, the inn as a place for trading in liquor, could be the meeting-place for dissident elements, failure to report their presence was punishable by the death of the inn-keeper. One text tells of refugees, a physician and five cooks who, on fleeing to Mari, stayed in the inn. Another, from the same city, lists seven men and one woman by name as in the service of, or owning, inns (bîtāt sābî).”

The point of all of this is that Rahab apparently had connections, position, and some amount of wealth. Hers was the place for the out of towners to come and connect.

She on her part, it would seem, had an obligation to report, to spy on the out of towners - to keep the king informed.

But there is a problem this time - She believes in the God of the Israelites. She recognizes who HE is, and she has already chosen to follow Him, at the time of this invasion.

‎So these men have come to her seeking her out. She recognizes who they are. She understands something about God. She understands something about the Israelites and God’s mission for them. So she is going to protect them.

‎In verse 4 we’re told the famous lie that Rahab told.

Joshua 2:4 NKJV

Then the woman took the two men and hid them. So she said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.

What’s interesting about this episode is this is taking place in a military or warfare context where the spies are clearly on a mission for the army of God which is in this case is the Israelites. So in a military context they are involved in a covert operation which necessarily calls for a certain amount of deception to the enemy.

‎I think it's important for us to put this in the broader context of the angelic conflict in the warfare that God is engaged in with the enemies of His plans and operations whether those enemies are angelic or whether those enemies are human. It seems that is perhaps one of the reasons that God has revealed things the way He did in the Old Testament. Now after the death of Christ on the cross we can go back and we can clearly see a number of things that were revealed in the Old Testament that are abundantly clear when we look at them through the lens of what happened at Golgotha.

But if you all you had was the Old Testament and you didn't have the Holy Spirit - even John the Baptist is asking questions.

‎“Are you really the Messiah or should we be looking for somebody else?” he asked.

‎And Jesus was John’s first cousin. He’s heard all the stories from his mother about the birth of his cousin and miraculous virgin conception and birth with Mary. And even he has doubts. So there is this uncertainty that even with all of the Old Testament, men didn't know quite what Jesus was going to do (what the Messiah was going to do.)

‎I think God intentionally did it that way also to deceive Satan. Satan may have thought he had a trump card when he had Jesus crucified and that didn’t work out so well for him - it was his own death sentence that in turn defeated him at the cross even though he continues to fight on until he is finally and totally defeated at the end of the Armageddon campaign and then again when he's released at the end of the Millennial Kingdom and is sent to the Lake of Fire for eternity.

‎So God uses deception in warfare. I think that's important doctrine. God uses deception. You can see it in 1 Kings 26 when God has the angels gather around Him (the sons of God) and He says, “Who's going to go out and deceive Ahab for Me? Who are we going to send that mission?”

‎We have a tendency to think that when there are these angelic gatherings, that it would include both the elect angels (the Holy Angels) as well as the fallen angels; but it's conceivable that God is sending an elect angel and not a demon to exercise deception.

‎If you look at the book of Joshua which we haven't gone through, there are a lot of different types of deception in the book of Joshua as they're engaged in military conflict. After the battle at Jericho in the very next battle when they go to Ai and they fight the battle there, what do they do? They hide the majority of the Israelite army back up a canyon somewhere and they send in seven thousand troops who engage the men at Ai. They come out from behind their fortification and begin to defeat the Israelites. They fade back in a move that reminds me of the way the Apaches would often fight in the Southwest. They would fade back in; and they faded back into the mountains to a point where the remainder of the Israelite army (the majority of it) would then crush them from the side and ambush them - just a classic deceptive maneuver. We see God using deception in His battle in the warfare against Satan and the warfare against His human enemies.

‎Now I think this is an important doctrine to study. Robbie Dean has a friend who is a naval commander. He teaches military ethics at the Naval War College up in Rhode Island. He and Dr. Dean were in the Masters of Theology Program at Dallas Seminary and were also in the PhD Program of Historical Theology together. Now his friend, Tim has gone on to earn, he said, think 2 more doctorates and 3 more master's degrees (or something like that) because the military will pay for all of this. So he’s gotten additional degrees. He teaches military ethics.

Dean called him up two or three years ago; and I said, “Tim, how do you handle Rahab as a foundation for covert operations and military deception and undercover operations?”

‎He said, “Hum. I never thought of that.”

‎He ought to do some thinking about that. That's a very interesting thing to think about. Unfortunately nobody has really thought about it or written on this as a as a doctrine or theology; but I think that that is very much worth exploring because that's the kind of situation that we have here. This isn't necessarily the kind of situation that you and I face on a day-to-day basis and just living our lives and we have to decide, “Well, are we going to lie or deceive somebody or tell the truth?”

‎This is within a totally different context - the same type of context that you have with police officers who go undercover on drug stings, with CIA's operatives who are going undercover, in military operations and are having to tell lies and completely fabricate everything in order to carry out their mission.

‎If you take what we should consider a typical surface approach to this passage, where you look and say, “Well, this lie was wrong. Lying (deceiving) at any time is wrong.” - which is what most of us have heard over the years; then when you come to a passage like this - if you're in the military and you're thinking about a career in military intelligence or you want to go to work with the police or with the FBI (something like that) you have to have a theology that can incorporate deception without going into something like situational ethics. So this is an extremely tantalizing incident here; and I don't think that Rahab is doing anything that is morally or ethically wrong. She is operating within the context of warfare and she understands that.

‎So she tells the king– that the men came and went; and she doesn't know where they went. She had actually taken them up onto the roof where she hid them with stalks of flax which she had laid out in order on the roof. So this is other materials which you would be using in the running of her inn so to speak.

Joshua 2:7 NKJV

Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan, to the fords. And as soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate.

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‎So they believed her. That is the guards that the king sent out and they started chasing them. But as soon as they go out, they began to realize that she had not told the truth.

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‎So she then goes up to the men in verse 8 and says to them:

‎NKJ Joshua 2:8

Joshua 2:8 NKJV

Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof,

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Joshua 2:9 NKJV

and said to the men: “I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you.

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‎…which indicates the fear and panic that had already set in among the Canaanites.

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‎and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of the Israelites.

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They’ve already won the main battle which has to do with mental attitude and the commitment of the enemy to go to war. The canaanites have given up already. They’re already defeated mentally.

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Joshua 2:10 NKJV

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.

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Joshua 2:11 NKJV

And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.

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Rahab has a tremendous faith in God; and she is going to throw her lot in with the Israelites because she is convinced and has the faith in what God's plan is.

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‎So then she says to them:

Joshua 2:12 NKJV

Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the Lord, since I have shown you kindness, that you also will show kindness to my father’s house, and give me a true token,

Joshua 2:13 NKJV

and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.”

Joshua 2:14 NKJV

So the men answered her, “Our lives for yours, if none of you tell this business of ours. And it shall be, when the Lord has given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you.”

‎‎So the men swore to her that that’s exactly what they would do. Then she let them out by a rope through the window for her house was on the city wall.

Now remember that last time we said:

The holy war depicts the battle. The holy physical holy war of the Old Testament depicts the spiritual battle in the soul and the basic method of operation is on the basis of faith. But it's not faith as an autonomous or independent mystical power. It is faith or belief in the promise of God, the procedures He outlines and in the power of God the Holy Spirit. Those three things go together - the promises, the procedures and the power of God the Holy Spirit. They work together. You can’t have one of those without the other. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals the Word of God. It’s the Holy Spirit that takes the Word of God and puts it into our life. It is through the Word of God the Holy Spirit leads, guides and directs us.

So when we entered into this focal point on these two events that the writer of Hebrews brings to our attention here - the defeat of Jericho, the conquest of Jericho and the behavior of Rahab who's inside the fortress. Then we come to understand that this has great application for us and the spiritual life as part of the faith rest drill.

Now recall that Moses was not allowed to enter into the land.

In retrospect, because He represented the law in one aspect - he could not be the one to picture bringing us into sanctification.

It wasn't until Joshua led the people into the land at the conquest that's covered in the book of Joshua and as exemplified in the conquest of Jericho and then even the faith of Rahab who was not a Jew. She was a Gentile. She was a Canaanite. Yet nevertheless she trusted in the promise of God and because she did marry into Israel and she in fact was in the line of Christ. She is an ancestor to the Lord Jesus Christ in His humanity that she is included in here as an example of those who believe (who trust in the Lord) and the Lord gives them victory.

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