Canter Bridge

Unlike its pious custodians, biblical narrative that revolves around prostitutes and beggars rarely condemns its protagonists. At times they appear almost to be seers, people who glimpse what scowling passersby miss entirely.

Then Joshua son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, ‘Go, view the land, especially Jericho.’ So they went, and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and spent the night there.

There is some doubt that Rahab was the kind of woman that convention has made her out to be. But not much. Probably, she is a prostitute, her livings on Jericho’s wall, eager to meet the needs of travelers for the common price. Her iconic truth consists not in any refusal to distort the facts when this is convenient nor in choosing trust-building behavior in a monogamous society whose men were wont to seek superfluous comfort on business trips. On the first count, she lies to her compatriots about the whereabouts of the Israelite spies whom she has hidden on her roof. On the second, her services are of the kind known to fissure families when the household head returns home a bit too fulfilled from his traveling labors.

Rahab’s truth consists of her perception that YHWH had his own devastating purpose for Israel to carry out and that this would bring an end to life, family, and community as she knew these. With an urgency that New Testament scholars would come to recognize as existential decisiveness in the face of eschatological intrusion, she casts in her lot with invading Israel, managing by her shrewdness to secure safe passage for her extended family in the of Jericho’s calamity.

So often it is those who live in alleys and upon walls who escape the delusions forced upon regular people by the status quo and its presumptive inevitability. Rahab, like others on the margins, detects the quick movement of YHWH’s hand in the twilight and squints to see what might be his shadowy purpose.

She is not condemned for her profession, rather saluted for her perceptive decisiveness when YHWH breaks his stillness and acts.

This too is faith, for which prostitutes and beggars are remembered still, even given a name. Rahab, Bartimaeus, and their unlikely offspring cast shadows still in alleys and upon walls.