Her job was not the type desired by most women. It may have earned the most profit, but the job was frown upon, considered not suitable for women who were looking for marriage.
Single, intelligent, robust, and well groomed, the hooker managed her company with pride. Quick witted and clever, her shrewdness demanded respect from her customers. She did not tolerate foolishness. As managing director of her company, she had learned early in life how to pit herself against the male dominating class and in her line of work she needed,
- This hardness,
- This steadfastness,
- This I can do anything mentality.
She shunned popularity, yet she could not avoid it. Everyone from the prominent to the penniless pauper knew where she lived.
Female friends---No thank you. She learned early to refrain from such friendships. Most females had no desire to know her anyway. Her kind represented the scum of society; association of any kind took place only under tight secrecy. Of course, the town bantered her name about with jovial descriptions and gestures, but the things they said were not words they would repeat publically, and certainly, not to her.
Even though no one considered her a lady, just someone to have a little bit of fun with every now and then, no one dared to annoy her for fear their secret would be revealed.
After all, she committed acts of intimacy the magnificent genteel women that many of the men had married would never dream of committing. They were respectable women; the genteel of society, and everyone knew genteel women only tolerated the attentions of their husbands. Intimacy stemmed out of their benevolent act of kindness.
Never mind that the hooker might have been the bread earner in her family; never mind that she ran a profitable establishment combined with hotel; never mind that she took pride in doing the best she could do with what she had.
The fact that she did what she did made her the scum of society, unfit to be treated with respect, and unfit to live––with the exception of nighttime pleasures she gave to whoever could afford it.
However, the hooker had strength. Along with others of her city, she had heard the rumors, which circulated throughout the city. She knew something was about to take place, something, which would destroy her and her family, if she did not take matters into her own hands and bargain quickly.
So, when the two men showed up at her hotel, she waited patiently until the right time presented itself. That they were different and stood out among all the other guests that frequented her establishment made her open her heart to trust the two strange and peculiar men, they were not like the others. They were not disrespectable, and contrary to most men; they did not demand she spread her legs to practice her trade.
They knew she was the town whore, but they respected her, and it confirmed the stories she had heard about this God who had declared himself as the Watchman for this peculiar people.
The city had been expecting the men to show up. The guards at the gate had been doubled. The wall had been repaired where needed and a decree, issued by the king ordered the citizens to be cautious of any strangers.
Everyone expected the men to walk into the city and live in a respectable hotel. The city's inhabitants were on the look out. No one suspected they would go live in the house planted high up on the wall.
Can't you see her people?
Here is a woman shunned by society,
- A prostitute,
- A hooker,
- A whore,
Whom no one would give the time of day, yet she was hostess to two spies delegated to spy out her land and became the first foreigner to enter into the lineage of The Messiah. She was the prostitute who negotiated for the lives of the only citizens who would remain alive and well on that dreadful day when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.
- How do you come to your negotiating table? Are you prepared?
This woman was.
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Something went wrong, and the king and his officials began to tremble. Strangers had been seen.
Someone in the king's court whispered, "They entered the house of Rahab."[1]
Outrage, the King sent an order to the woman, "Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have to spy out the whole land."[2]
- How could two men managed to slip through the tight security in such a secure city?
Diplomacy was needed, and the woman was brilliant. Knowing the men had been seen entering her quarters, she practiced the diplomatic art of lying.
"Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don't know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them."[3]
The city was built on a mound embanked by earth, at the top, the mud-brick wall, six feet thick and twenty-six feet high, at the base, forty-six feet thick above ground level outside the retaining wall.
Built into the back wall, at the top, her house stood out. Centrally located, it made it easier for those who snuck in to easily sneak out. The woman hid them in the roof under stalks of flax she had laid out, and while the king's soldiers rode out into the night to find them, the men were resting comfortably in the roof of the prostitute.
They had not yet fallen asleep when she came up to the roof with her proposition. What must they have thought? Here, a gentile, a woman who worshipped strange gods, the town whore, yet she did not find it beneath herself to seek asylum from the God she had heard about. She sought mercy from Yahweh.
- What would you offer for your life and the lives of your family?
- How do you bargain for something when a decision has already fallen? Or do you just give up and accept the inevitable?
Early morning and the time came to flee–– but how? The men surveyed the window. It was a sizeable drop. The woman thought quickly and brought out a scarlet rope, and pointed at the window, which was often used to help some straying husband steal away in the midnight hours––the window which became the window to freedom.
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- What would you have demanded as a guarantee or a security deposit to insure your negotiators kept their word?
The two spies gave her instructions to follow, to cash in on her guarantee. Her scarlet rope had to be hanging in the window of freedom. The woman took her guarantee, the scarlet rope, and packed it away safely.
The time arrived. The first day of the march began, and the woman hurriedly placed her scarlet rope in the window to be seen.
Can't you see her people?
The whore turned negotiator had been Chosen to be the last remnant of her nation! Her nationality was being wiped out. She and the people in her home were the only survivors!
Sitting in the safety of her house, surrounded by her family and all they possessed, she lived through the judgment that fell on her people and not one of them was injured!
Her faith in the Yahweh of Israel saved her entire household. There was no doubt in her mind, the LORD is God, and the God of Israel is the LORD!
-------------------
Years passed. Time changed. It is Anno Domini. The Messiah has come into the world and has returned back to the Father. One day, one of the recorders of history, Matthew, led by the Holy Spirit, was capturing the ancestry line of the Son of God on parchment. As he notated the lineage starting with Abraham, he had to smile as he recorded the lines of The Chosen leading up to the eleventh generation.
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
Salmon the father of Boaz,
Whose mother was Rahab, the prostitute.[4]
A few years later, another writer sat down and began to record the names of the first people who entered faith's Hall of Fame, the Generals who helped change the history of the world. As he began to annotate his proof of faith in God and its effects upon history, he also smiled as the Holy Spirit led him to write down,
By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.[5]
Rahab,
- The prostitute,
- The hooker,
- The whore,
The woman twice mentioned in the inspired Word of God, the Holy Bible, was indoctrinated in faith's Hall of fame.
There is no favoritism in God!
- Your past,
- Your age,
- Your nationality
Does not matter with him!
I closed my eyes, and In my spirit, I heard the loud mouth disciple, who betrayed Jesus three times, as he declared in the house of Cornelius, after he had finally understood a pin drop of the plan as revealed to him by the Holy Spirit,
"I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men and women from every nation who fear him and do what is right."[6]*
Shalom,
Pat Garcia
[1] Joshua 2:1, THE HOLY BIBLE, The New International Version, Edited 1984, ZONDERVAN
[2] Joshua 2:3, THE HOLY BIBLE, The New International Version, Edited 1984, ZONDERVAN
[3] Joshua 2:4-5, THE HOLY BIBLE, The New International Version, Edited 1984, ZONDERVAN
[4] Matthew 1:4-5, THE HOLY BIBLE, The New International Version, Edited 1984, ZONDERVAN
[5] Hebrews 11:3, THE HOLY BIBLE, The New International Version, Edited 1984, ZONDERVAN
[6] Acts 10:34, THE HOLY BIBLE, The New International Version, Edited 1984, ZONDERVAN
*Verse changed to include women by Pat Garcia
