Just before the Hebrews cross the Jordan, Joshua sends a second round of spies into Jericho. As best we can tell they don’t discover anything useful to the disposition of the troops during the upcoming siege—particularly because that disposition involves walking around the walls of the fort while blaring loudly on ram’s horns—but they do have a notably weird encounter with a woman called Rahab.
Rahab is a prostitute. In a small semi-militarised fort like Jericho this means she runs a waystation or ‘inn,’ most likely the only place for anyone in Jericho is stay if they were visiting. She would also provide some variety of sexual services to those who stayed and probably the men in the fort. It’s possible that her and her household were essentially the only non-combatants in Jericho, largely full of fighting men there to guard the fords of the Jordan.
The spies arrive, it’s natural for them to go to the only place outsiders can go. The waystation is tolerated in a fort like this because it serves the strategic purpose of allowing the men of Jericho to spy on any who come to spy on them. It’s no surprise that they go straight to Rahab and ask for the men to be turned over to them.
Of course, the surprise of the story is that Rahab doesn’t do that and instead gives allegiance to Yahweh, leading to the salvation of her household in the sack of Jericho in a series of symbols designed to mirror the Passover. One of Rahab’s sons was Boaz, perhaps present during the sack of Jericho and all that followed, who as a much older man would redeem and marry the Moabite Ruth. Their great-grandson is King David. Rahab’s rescue turns out to be vital to the geopolitical success of Israel as a nation, as well as the eventual salvation of the world through her eventual descendent, Jesus.
I’d like to focus on one weird detail. When she hides the spies, she hides them under ‘stalks of flax’ on the roof. It’s always worth considering these details in the Bible. ‘Stalks of flax’ read woodenly in Hebrew is ‘trees of linen.’ Hebrew has a small vocabulary, so this sort of thing is not uncommon, and ‘stalks of flax’ is a good literal translation; however remembering that flax is made into linen and noticing that they are sheltered under trees helps us with the symbolic or typological reading.
Why are they hid under linen? If we want to move beyond ‘because that’s what was there,’ which is the sort of answer that is absolutely true and absolutely unilluminating, then we need to consider the symbolic domains of ‘tree’ and ‘linen.’ I’ve written about trees extensively, so would like to explore this idea of the ‘linen’ (peshet).
We might immediately want to go to the tabernacle the clothing of the priests, which both contain significant amounts of linen. That’s not an irrelevant choice, but that’s the Hebrew word shesh, meaning byssus cloth, linen, or anything bleached white, or bad meaning linen. First, I’d like to look at other occurrences of the less common word used in Joshua, peshet, meaning flax or the linen cloth made from flax.
We discover the common distinction between wool and linen in the Law’s insistence on not mixing fibres. The importance of distinction is clear; Rahab is hiding these men because she would like to become one of them rather than one of the people of Jericho. We also find the Proverbs 31 woman, who Rahab’s daughter-in-law Ruth becomes the primary Biblical type of, seeking wool and flax. Since ‘wool and flax’ often seems to be a Hebrew idiom for ‘cloth’ in the general sense that doesn’t particular inform our reading, except in comparison with Ruth’s use of Proverbs, perhaps Rahab herself is also an example of the Proverbs 31 woman: surprising considering her profession, but not really more surprising than a Moabite being the primary example the scriptures use.
More helpfully, most of the other uses of peshet in the Old Testament are in Ezekiel, in his vision of the coming new Temple. The priests of the temple to come—the church—wear linen garments, and while Ezekiel alludes to the word (shesh) used for linen in Exodus regarding the tabernacle, and uses it earlier in his writing, he specifically highlights that new covenant priests wear the same kind of linen that the spies are covered with. Certainly, there’s a strong priestly connection if we also consider the use of shesh in Exodus: the tabernacle’s curtains are woven linen, the high priest in his walking-talking-tabernacle garb is also dressed in linen.
Peshet also shares a root with the words for folly and transgression. There is something evocation about a tree of folly or transgression covering them, though its linguistically backwards to then reach to the cross that covers our sin. It seems priestly.
This is intensified if we look at the New Testament. If we ignore the word for linen wicks in lamps and for linen bandages or graveclothes, we are left with one reference in Luke 16 to the clothes of a rich man and five references in Revelation. Linen is a product of Babylon the great in her economic success and the city clothes itself in purple linen. White linen is then worn by the other city, the Bride, which is her righteous deeds. Most interesting to our reading of Joshua, the armies that follow in the vanguard of Jesus as he rides a white horse in Revelation 19 are clothed in white linen.
The armour of heaven’s armies is white linen. The spies from the Hebrews are ‘clothed’ in linen. Rahab is setting them apart as the armies of heaven. This is particularly pertinent when before the siege and sack of Jericho, Joshua has an encounter with the Commander of the Armies of the Lord who, in no uncertain terms, tells Joshua to get on his side and join his armies. To take Jericho requires a heavenly army, an army in priestly vestments, an army that wins by worship rather than the sword. Rahab prefigures all of this by clothing them in flax waiting to be made into linen.
That those linen stalks are a tree helps us see that the gospel in Joshua 2 is not just the recapitulation of Passover in the scarlet cord, and from that to the blood of the lamb who covers any who come to him, but also that the cross is the tree that makes us priest-warriors in heaven’s army. We are given new clothes, vestments, a new purpose and commission. We are to tend and keep the Temple of God, the church, that breaking in of the new creation, until all of the earth becomes a Temple at Christ’s return as the new creation reaches its fulfilment.
Photo by Victor Volkov on Unsplash
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