Can You Keep a Secret?

“Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bid this line of scarlet thread in the window which then didst let us down by: and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brother, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee”…..”And if thou utter this our business, then we will be quit of thine oath which thou hast made us to swear.”  Joshua 2:18,20

Two men from Israel had been sent to spy out Jericho because the Israelites were going to destroy it.  The spies were sent to gather information so that the men of Israel would be prepared to take the city by force.  A Gentile woman named Rahab had helped them escape because she had come to believe in the God of Israel.  She had asked them to spare her family and herself in the coming battle, and they promised to do so.  Her house was on the town wall, and she let them down from her window so that they could return to Joshua and their fellow Israelites with the information that they had gathered.

To keep the two spies safe once they rappelled down the wall, she told them to flee to the mountain and hide there for three days.  After that, they would find safe passage back across the Jordan River to Joshua’s camp.  The number three is very significant in scripture.  The most memorable three days were the time between Jesus’ crucifixion and His resurrection.  God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are three in one.  The Apostle Paul was three days without sight when he first became a believer in Jesus Christ (Acts 9:9).  The New Jerusalem has three gates on each of four sides (Revelation 21:13), and there are many other references to the number three or multiples thereof.  I suppose if the two spies had not hidden the three days, there would have been no assurance that they wouldn’t have been caught.  It pays to obey.

Before they left Rahab’s home, they wanted to make sure that she understood what she was to do in order to comply with their instructions.  Otherwise, they would not be held to the vow that they had made to rescue she and her family.  Again, it pays to obey.  The most important instruction was for her to hang the same cord outside her window so that when the soldiers came to take the city, they would know to leave her house alone.  The cord was red in color.  This reminds us of the blood that was applied to the door frame of the homes of the Hebrew people when they were in Egypt to protect their young ones when the angel of death flew over.  It also reminds us of the blood that Christ shed upon the cross to provide salvation for all who would repent and believe.  The Old Testament has many references that allude to the events of the New Testament and vice versa.  The two books are intertwined.  The New without the Old leaves us without any background for the purpose of the New, while the Old without the New leaves us lost and wandering in the dark.  Those who say that the Old Testament is no longer relevant must not be reading the same Bible that I read.

It was imperative that this red cord hung out of Rahab’s window and also for her family to be gathered in her home when the men of Israel came to Jericho.  Rahab had no clue as to when this would happen, but these instructions had to be followed immediately.  (There is nothing like preparing ahead of time for one never knows when the Lord will return.)  The three days that the spies would hide would also give her time to comply with their instructions.  It was extremely important that Rahab keep her family members inside her home because if she did not and allowed them to wander outside among the Jericho citizens, they would lose their lives along with the people of Jericho.  If that happened, the fault of the deaths of her family members would not be the fault of the two spies.  However, if soldiers broke into her home and killed any of her family, the guilt would fall to the two spies who would have to honor the vow that they made to give up their own lives in exchange (verse 19).  It doesn’t get any more serious than that.

The protection of Rahab and her family depended upon her not uttering a word about Israel’s plan to attack Jericho.  We have to wonder what she told her family to convince them to come and stay at her house for at least three days without being allowed to go outside.  Perhaps God had given them an instinct to know that something was up.  They, too, had been made fearful of Israel by hearing the stories of Israel’s miracles and conquests as Rahab had making her turn to the LORD.  Because Rahab was able to keep this secret, she and her family were rescued by Israel, and she became an ancestor of Jesus Christ by marrying Salmon, believed to have been one of the two spies, and, in time, they became the parents of Boaz who married Ruth.  The two of them became the great-great grandparents of King David.  So, like I said before, it pays to obey.