Rahab helps two Israelite men in Jericho

Scripture quotations are from the EasyEnglish Bible Copyright © MissionAssist 2018, 2024 – UK Charitable Incorporated Organisation 1162807. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.easyenglish.bible 

Joshua 2:1-24

1 Then Joshua * sent two men to go out from Shittim*. He sent them in secret to see what the land was like. He told them, ‘Go! Look at all the land. Look very carefully at Jericho * city.’

When they came to Jericho city, they arrived at the house of a prostitute*. Her name was Rahab. They stayed there.

2 Some people told the king of Jericho, ‘Look! Some Israelite * men have come here tonight to see what our land is like.’

3 So the king of Jericho sent a message to Rahab. He said, ‘Bring out the men who are staying in your house. They have come secretly to see what all our land is like!’

4 But Rahab had hidden the two men. She replied, ‘Yes, some men did come to me. I did not know where they had come from. 

5 When it was nearly time to close the gate of the city for the night, they left. I do not know where they went. If you chase* after them quickly, you may catch them.’

6 But Rahab had taken the men up to the roof. She had hidden them under some straw that she had put there.

 7 So the king's officers went out of the city to try to find the two Israelite men. They went along the road to the Jordan River, to the place where the road goes across the river. As soon as they had left, people shut the city gate.

8 Rahab went up to the roof of her house. She spoke to the men as they prepared to sleep. 

9 She said to them, ‘I know that the Lord has given this land to you. Everyone here is afraid of you Israelites. Everyone who lives in this land is very frightened. 

10 We heard how the Lord caused the water of the Red Sea to become dry. In that way he brought you out of Egypt. We heard what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites. We heard how you destroyed them completely on the east side of the Jordan River. 

11 When we heard what you had done, we were very frightened. We know that we are not strong enough to fight against you because the Lord, your God, is God. He rules everything in heaven and on earth.

12 Now, please use the Lord's name to make a strong promise. I have been kind to you. So promise me that you will be kind to my family. Show me that you will certainly do what you have promised. 

13 When you attack this city, do not kill my family. Save the lives of my father, my mother, my brothers and sisters, and all their families.’

14 The men replied, ‘We promise to do that. If anyone kills you or your family, may we die too! Do not tell anyone about us. When the Lord gives us this land, we will be kind to you. We will save your lives.’

15 So Rahab put a rope out through the window of her house. (The house that she lived in was part of the city wall.) The men climbed down the rope. 

16 Rahab told them, ‘Go to the hills. The men who are chasing you will not find you there. Hide there for three days until they return to this city. Then you can go back to your people.’

17 The men said to her, ‘If you do what we say, we will do what we have promised. 

18 We will soon attack this land. So tie this red string in the window that we came through. Bring your father, your mother, your brothers and sisters and all your family into your house. 

19 If any of them leaves your house, they may die. If that happens, we will not be guilty. We will only be guilty if our soldiers hurt anyone who is in your house. 

20 But if you tell anyone about us, we do not have to do what we have promised to you.’

21 Rahab said, ‘I agree with what you have said.’ She sent the men away. When they had gone, she tied the red string in her window.

22 The two Israelite men went into the hills and they hid there. The king's officers looked along the road for them for three days. They did not find them, so they returned to Jericho.

 23 Then the two men came down from the hills and they went across the Jordan River. They went back to Joshua. They told him everything that had happened. 

24 They said to him, ‘We are sure that the Lord has given us the whole land. All the people there are very frightened of us.’

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Important Vocabulary to Learn

(These words are in the reading above, and some are in the questions and glossary below.)

1. Words from the first 1000 high frequency General Service Word List

across, agree (with), ancient, arrive(d) (at), attack, believe,  better, bring/brought, carefully, catch, cause(d), certainly, complete(ly), destroy(ed), dry, enemy/enemies, fall, fight, find, gate, give/given, happen(s)(ed), hear(d), hill(s), however, kill, kind (adjective), king, leader, leave(s), officer(s), prepare(d), promise, relatives, reply/replied, return(ed) (to), river, rule(s), save, sea, secret(ly), show(n), soldiers, speak/spoke, stay(ed)(ing), stone, strong, take/taken, trust(ed), wall, whole, window.

(And all the other words in the reading that are not listed in numbers 2 and 3 below.)

2. Words from the second 1000 high frequency General Service Word List

afraid, anger, camp(ed), climbed, disease, frightened, guilty, hid/hidden/hide, holy, hurt, list(ed), message, opposite, quickly, roof, rope, send/sent, shut, straw, string, tie/tied, tonight, tribe(s), worship(ping).

3. Off list words (these words are marked with a *)

chase, chasing, sex, sin/sinned/sinner.

4. Glossary of Special Terms and Names (These words are marked with a *)

family tree - A list of all the people in your family who lived before you (and sometimes other relatives.)

Israelite(s) - someone from the tribes of ancient Hebrew people. They came from the family of Jacob, the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham. 

Jericho - an ancient city on the west side of the Jordan River. The people of Jericho had built strong stone walls around the city to keep it safe from their enemies. God made these walls fall down when the Israelites went around it. 

Joshua - Joshua became the leader of the Israelites after Moses died. Many years before the story in this reading, Moses had sent 12 men to look over the land across the Jordan River. When they came back, 10 men were very frightened by what they had seen. Joshua (and Caleb) were the only two men who trusted God’s promises to the Israelites, and were not frightened. God was pleased with Joshua and told Moses he (Joshua) would be the leader after him (Moses).

(to) look down on (someone) - To think someone is not as good as you are. To think someone is a bad person because they live in a way that you think is wrong.

prostitute - a sex worker

Shittim - Shittim was a place (and a town) east of the Jordan River, opposite the city of Jericho. Shittim was the last place where the Israelites camped after their 40 years in the desert. It was also a place where many of God’s people had sinned by worshipping another god. Because of their sin, God had shown His holy anger by sending a bad disease among them, so that many people died.  

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Learning Questions and Activities 

1. Remembering - Why did the two Israelite men go to Jericho? How did the king of Jericho know that they were in the city? Where did Rahab hide the two men? What did Rahab tell the king’s men? (Try to explain this in English in your own words.) Did the king’s men find the two men? What did they tell Rahab to do to keep her family safe?

2. Understanding - Why did Rahab decide to hide the two men? We know that she wanted to keep her family safe, but what were some other reasons? (Check your answer in verses 9,10 and 11.) What did Rahab understand about who God is?

3. Applying - Rahab was a prostitute, and many people may think she was a bad woman. However, God used her to keep the two men safe. She and her family were saved because she knew what God was like and she trusted Him. 

Much later, Rahab is listed in the ‘family tree *’ of Jesus. (He was born around 1,400 years after this story. You can see this in Matthew 1 verse 5.)  Jesus must have known this, because Jewish people of His time took care to learn and remember their family tree. (Matthew, who followed Jesus, also knew this, because he wrote about it.)

We read, in Luke 7:36–50, that Jesus was kind to women like Rahab. Jesus had very strong words for people who looked down on * women like her. These people thought that God was pleased with them because they kept God’s laws, and that He would think they were good. However, Jesus said…

'Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you,' Matthew 21:28–32 

The Bible teaches us that God does not save people because they are good. He saves people because they trust in Him alone, not themselves. (You can read this in John 14:6 where Jesus said, ‘I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. Nobody comes to the Father except by me.’ )

And…

Later, in Acts 4:12: Peter writes ‘Only Jesus can save people. There has never been another person in the world that could do this. God has not given any other man the authority to save us.’

Talk about these questions with another person, or in a group… 

1. Why do you think God saves some people and not others?  

2. Do you trust in Jesus alone to save you, or do you hope that you are good enough to please God? What if you are not sure? 

More thinking: Here are some questions just for you to think about on your own…

3. Are there people that you know, or people in your village or town or city that you look down on? 

4. How does God want you to think of such people? 

5. Who can help you think in the right way about these people?

6. How can you show God’s love to them?

4. Analysing - In the reading we see an example of a sentence that uses the verb 'to hide’ in the past perfect tense -  'had hidden' (verse 4).

When we make this verb tense, we use this pattern…  

Subject ( I, you, he, she, it etc.) + had + past participle (of a verb)

We use this verb tense to talk about something that happened in the past before something else (also in the past) happened. Here is an example sentence…

I had looked for my keys for 20 minutes before I found them. 

                                                                                 Past perfect                                                                              Simple past

In the sentence above, what happened first (in real time)? What happened after that? 

You could also say what happened this way…

I found my keys after I had looked for them for 20 minutes.

Has the order of what happened in real time changed? (Check your answer below the lesson.)

Can you find five other examples of the past perfect verb tense in the reading?  (Check your answer at the end of this lesson.)

5. Evaluating - The Israelites had left Egypt 40 years before they crossed the Jordan River and came to Jericho. That’s 40 years before they met Rahab. However, Rahab knew the stories about how God had helped the Israelites and how strong they were. (Notice how the past perfect and simple past are used in the last three sentences. What happened first in real time?)

Rahab was a prostitute. The people of her city, and perhaps the Israelites too, may have thought she was not living a good life. They may have thought she was a sinner. Why did God let the Israelites save Rahab and her family, but not other people in the city of Jericho who may have lived ‘better’ lives than her?  

Do you think Rahab really trusted in the God of Israel, or was she just trying to save her family? What (in the story) helps you to answer this question? 

6. Creating - Sentence race. Putting a story into the right order. (You need a timekeeper for this activity.)

1. Work in teams or pairs. 

2. Print the sentence boxes below. Each team, or person in a pair, needs a copy of all the sentences.

3. Cut along the lines so that each sentence is on its own piece of paper.

4. Put the sentences on a table upside down so you can’t see the words.

5. Move the papers around so that they are all mixed up.

6. Now have a race against another team (or a partner if you are working in pairs).

7. Ask a timekeeper to say 'Go’. Pick up one sentence at a time, and one by one, put the whole story into the correct order.

8. When a team or person has finished, they should say ‘Stop’, and everyone should stop at the same time.

9. Ask the timekeeper to check that the sentences are in the right order. (The answers are below this lesson.)

      10. Who is first to get all the sentences in the right order?

      11. If the order is wrong, the timekeeper should start the race again.

You can make this even more fun, by setting a time limit. Can you make the whole story within three minutes? One minute? 30 seconds?