RAHAB BELIEVES IN OUR GOD’S REPUTATION
In Psalm 46:10 God says: “I will be exalted among the
heathen.” The record of the Israelites when they first came into God’s promised
land is a great example of how that verse was manifested in real life.
“Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy
secretly, saying, ‘Go view the land, even Jericho.’ And they went, and came
into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there. And it was told the king
of Jericho, saying, ‘Behold, there came men in hither tonight of the children
of Israel to search out the country.’ And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab,
saying, ‘Bring forth the men that are come to thee’” (Joshua 2:1-3a).
But Rahab knew that the king
would kill the spies, and she chose to hide them instead, on the roof of her
dwelling.
“And before they were laid down, she came up unto them
upon the roof; and she said unto the men, ‘I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that
your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint
because of you’” (Joshua 2:8-9).
All the inhabitants of the land were terrified! Remember,
in Canaan was where the Israelites first saw the giants, and just their size
alone scared the Israelite leaders so much that they wouldn’t go into the
promised land back then, and ended up wandering in the desert many more years!
I wonder if the Canaanites back then weren’t really as scary as the Israelite
leaders thought they were!!
But now it was different. The Israelites, led by the
younger leaders, Joshua and Caleb, had come to the edge of the land God had
given them. And the inhabitants were very afraid! Why? Because when Rahab spoke
of the Israelite’s God, she used the name Jehovah (Yahweh), which indicated the
Israelites’ covenant relationship with their God.
Rahab and the Canaanites understood what covenant meant.
It was in their culture. And not only that, but they’d heard about what
happened in Egypt with the battle between the gods of the Egyptians and the covenant
God of the Hebrews! And that’s where it
gets interesting.
Each of the ten plagues in Egypt was a direct hit on one
of the Egyptian gods! And the Canaanites worshipped some of the Egyptian gods
as well! Hapi was the god of the Nile, their source of water. He was supposed
to bring fertility, but when the plague came, the water turned to blood. It’s
interesting that the magicians, who were a type of priests in the Egyptian
culture, could also turn the water sources to blood and they did so to
challenge the power of our God.
Heqet was a frog-headed goddess and she was the goddess
of fruitfulness, but in the second plague there were so many frogs everywhere:
“ And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come
into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house
of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy
kneadingtroughs” (Exodus 8:3). Then just to prove they were powerful too, “the
magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land”
(Exod. 8:7). (Not too bright, those magicians!).
Set was the god of the desert and foreigners. He was
represented as lice or gnats. But when that plague came, “it became lice in
man, and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land
of Egypt” (Exod. 8:17b). And the priest magicians tried to bring lice as
well. They “did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could
not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast” (Exod. 8:18).
So, up through the first 2 of 10 plagues, the magicians
who called on their gods to compete with the power of our LORD (Jehovah, Yahweh), the God in covenant
with Moses, Aaron, and the Hebrews, could mimic our God’s plagues, but they
were stymied with the third plague and could not do it!
Then comes one of the greatest confessions of failure: “Then
the magicians said unto Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of God’” (Exod.
19a). They had to admit that Moses’ God was more powerful than theirs.
In fact, the word ‘God’ in that scripture is ‘Elohim’,
which means the ultimate creator of all things, and the Supreme God, higher
than, and more powerful than any other god!
It’s worth noticing at this point that the magician
priests of Egypt could do the first and second plagues, turning all the water
to blood, and bringing the frogs up on the land and into every place, even the
bedrooms and kitchens. They were only able to bring the bad, but they weren’t
able to get rid of it. They couldn’t get rid of the blood, nor the frogs. Only
our God could do that, and the magician priests weren’t able to bring on any of
the other plagues either, nor could they stop them.
The reputation of what our God would do for His covenant
people spread far and wide. And the fact that other nations knew the rules of a
covenant, they then knew that the Hebrew God would be able to do anything
necessary to protect and prosper His own. Pharaohs, Kings, High priests, nor
any other person should even try to call on their gods to compete with ours!
So, back to Rahab and the two Hebrew spies that were
coming to claim the land God promised they would occupy. Rahab said, “For we
have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you,
when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites,
that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly
destroyed” (Joshua 2:10).
“And as soon as we had heard these
things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any
man, because of you: for the LORD (Jehovah,
Yahweh) [who is in covenant with you] your God, he is God in heaven
above, and in earth beneath” (Joshua 2:11). The last two “Gods” in this verse
are the Hebrew word Elohim, meaning He is the Supreme God and Creator of heaven
and the whole earth beneath.
Rahab told the Hebrew spies that the people of Jericho
were terrified, not of the Israelites, but of their God! They heard the
stories. The blessing and power was proven; she recognized it and said so.
“Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto
me by the LORD, since I have shewed
you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give
me a true token: and that ye will save alive my father, and my
mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver
our lives from death.’ And the men answered her, ‘Our life for yours, if ye
utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the LORD hath given us the land, that we will
deal kindly and truly with thee’” (Josh. 2:12-14).
Moses and Aaron let God’s light shine in Egypt because
they obeyed Him, and wow did God shine on their behalf! It was never about what
Moses or Aaron could do, or on a bigger scale, what the Hebrew nation could do.
It’s always been about what God does. And it’s still that way. We point to what
God does and we obey Him.
The good we do comes from what God created within us. “Let
your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,
and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). People should know
that we’re always going to point them to our God.
We get to shine because of God. We remember that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above” (James 1:17a).
Love, Carolyn
NOTE: The story about Rahab was in a teaching by Sheila
Hitchcock and was on a video that my friend Kathy Stiles sent me about a month
ago. I thought Sheila made some really good points, and what caught my
attention was when she mentioned that Rahab told the 2 Israeli spies that the
people living there (the “ites”, the giants) were afraid, not of the
Israelites, but of the extent of the power of the covenant they had with their God,
who had the reputation of being THE SUPREME GOD! I’d just studied the importance
of covenant with Abraham and then with Moses, and how respected it is in
Eastern cultures, so it caught my attention with her mentioning what happened
later in Biblical history with Rahab and the Canaanites in Jericho.
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