Commentaria in Josue
“We will save you even if we must die.” But the former explanation is more genuine.
renders Vatablus, namely rendering service for service, and in fact performing the faith of safety which we have given thee. For there is a truth of justice, as there is of speech, that the good which we have truly promised we truly perform, of which John says in his Gospel, chapter viii: “He (the devil) stood not in the truth,” that is, in the faith and obedience promised to God. And in the third Epistle: “Thou walkest in truth.” And elsewhere: “The Lord shall look upon the truth.” And: “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.”
15. THEN SHE LET THEM DOWN WITH A CORD OUT OF A WINDOW.— As Paul at Damascus was let down from a window in a basket, of which these spies were a type and figure, Acts ix, 25.
FOR HER HOUSE JOINED CLOSE TO THE WALL.—The Septuagint: Because her house was in the wall, and in the wall she dwelt. Which is done at Rome also and elsewhere, where there is deep peace: for in time of war it is dangerous; for through houses adjoining the wall spies, and the enemies themselves, can securely enter and leave the city.
16. GET YE UP TO THE MOUNTAINS,—as to pathless and remote places. Mystically Origen: Christ, he says, commanded the Apostles to preach heavenly things, as if he said: Walk not through the valleys, shun low and abject things, teach lofty and sublime things.
WE SHALL BE BLAMELESS OF THIS OATH WHICH THOU HAST MADE US SWEAR (so hast made us swear, or to which thou hast driven us. So Pagninus and Vatablus) to you.
18. IF, WHEN WE COME INTO THE LAND, THIS SCARLET CORD BE A SIGN.—So read the Hebrew, Chaldee, Septuagint and the Roman, without the negative; the Complutensian and others, however, read with the negative: be not a sign. The sense therefore is, as if to say: We shall not be blameless, and shall not free our faith from this oath by which we swore to save thee and thine, unless thou bind this cord to the window, that by it as by a sign the Hebrews may distinguish thy house from the rest, and know that it is the one we swore to save. So Vatablus.
But because the Hebrew nekiim, that is blameless, rather signifies exempt and released from the obligation of an oath, or, as is commonly said, disobliged, as is clear from verses 17 and 20, hence from the Hebrew the sense here seems to be, as if to say: We shall be free and released from our oath if thou keep not the two things which we justly demand. For we demand, first, that thou give us this cord as a sign that the house is thine; secondly, that thou gather all thy kindred into thy house; so that we may know they are thine, not strangers; if thou keep not these two, we shall be released from our oath; but if thou keep them, we shall deem ourselves bound by it, and shall keep it holily. Hence the Complutensians and others, as I said, read with the negative: We shall be blameless, etc., if this cord be not a sign.
THIS SCARLET CORD (Hebrew rope).—“This,” namely which here offers itself to our eyes. Others: “this,” namely that by which thou hast let us down through the wall, so that the same thicker rope, which frees the spies from the hand of the Chanaanites, might also free Rahab, their deliverer, from the hand of the Hebrews. The spies give the sign of the rope which Rahab had asked, verse 12, and which before they were let down from the wall they ought to have given, but then, their minds disturbed by the danger, it did not occur to them, since all were wholly intent on flight from danger by the safe letting down from the window.
SCARLET.—It was done by God’s providence that by it, as being red, the blood of Christ might be represented. Hence St. Ambrose, book v On Faith, chapter v, holds that Rahab by this scarlet rope wished to signify the Passion of Christ, by whose faith and merits she was freed from the death of soul and body. Hear him, book v On Faith, chapter iv, near the end: “The harlot saw this, and despairing of any remedy of safety in the destruction of the city, because faith had conquered, raising the signs of faith and the standards of the Lord’s Passion, she bound scarlet in the window, that the appearance of the mystical blood which was to redeem the world might flourish. So outside, the name of Jesus was for the fighters unto victory, within, the appearance of the Lord’s Passion for those in danger unto safety. Hence, because Rahab understood the heavenly mystery, the Lord says in the psalm: I will be mindful of Rahab and of Babylon knowing me.”
So also St. Augustine on Psalm lxxxvi: “I will be mindful,” he says, “of Rahab. Who is she? That harlot in Jericho, the harlot who received the messengers and sent them out by another way, who presumed on the promise, who feared God, to whom it was said to put out a scarlet cord at the window, that is, to have on her forehead the sign of the blood of Christ. She was saved there, and signified the Church of the Gentiles. Hence the Lord said to the proud Pharisees: Amen I say to you, that the publicans and harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you. They go before, because they use violence. They press on by believing, faith yields, and no one can resist, because they that use violence bear it away.” So also St. Jerome, epistle 2 to Nepotian, teaches at length that scarlet is the symbol of the blood of Christ, and of the fiery charity with which Rahab burned. And Origen here, homily 4: The blood of Christ is the sign of redemption, he says, in the house of Rahab, that is in the Church.
AND ALL THY KINDRED,—namely not only parents, but uncles, aunts, cousins, indeed also relatives by marriage, namely the wives of kinsmen and the husbands of kinswomen; for these through wives and husbands belonged to Rahab, and were counted her kin. Abulensis denies this, Question lv, because in verse 13 Rahab asked only her brothers and sisters to be saved. But unjustly, for under the name of brothers and sisters nephews and kinsmen are understood among the Hebrews; for those whom he there called brothers he here calls kindred.
19. HIS BLOOD SHALL BE ON HIS OWN HEAD.—“Blood,” that is, the guilt of his own shed blood will fall upon himself, as if to say: He will perish by his own fault, not ours, because he did not keep the pact.
20. QUIT,—that is, free and released from the obligation of the oath.
by saying: “Go in peace,” or “Peace be with you”;
for she had already let them down by the cord through the wall: here, therefore, she bids farewell to those she sent away.
22. THEY WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS, AND STAYED THERE THREE DAYS,—not whole days, but halved or begun. For on the third day of the month Nisan or March, sent by Josue they viewed Jericho, and lodged with Rahab; but when their coming was at once announced to the king, and he ordered them to be sought, Rahab the same night let them down through the wall: let down and sent away they lay hid in the mountains for three days, namely the fourth, fifth and sixth of Nisan, but begun; for on the sixth day at evening they returned to Josue. Wherefore what Josephus writes does not seem true, that after their entrance into Jericho they spent the whole next day in exploring Jericho; for so they would have been betrayed and caught, and they learned enough from Rahab of the fear and state of the city, so that there was no need of so great a survey, especially in so great a danger, with the eyes of all intent on them. For on account of the neighbourhood of the Hebrews all the men of Jericho were dismayed and as it were lifeless, as Rahab says: wherefore they shut their city and guarded it most strictly, carefully inspecting and examining each who entered, and especially strangers, and reporting their names to the king, as is wont to be done daily at evening in cities which fear a neighbouring enemy. If anyone does not wish to be confined by these narrow limits of time, and prefers to take three whole days of hiding, let him say that the spies were sent by Josue and came into Jericho not on the third day of Nisan, after the thirty days of mourning for the death of Moses were completed, but before they were completed, on the first of Nisan, so that on the second day they explored Jericho, on the third returned, and lay hid in the mountains three whole days, and on the sixth day returned to Josue. So Salianus from Lyranus and Masius.