THINK ABOUT THIS: Here’s the Flax You Need to Know About Rahab the Prostitute
“Little” details can sometimes provide enormously important clues to the bigger story and there is a superb illustration of this reality in the Biblical account of how Rahab the Prostitute in Jericho hid the two Jewish spies.
Why would Rahab hide the spies? (Screenshot from IsJesusAlive video with Erik Manning).
The nation of Israel has completed its 40-year wandering in the Wilderness and is now poised on the other side of the Jordan River to cross into the Promised Land. Jericho, a great walled city, is the first obstacle they will encounter, so the spies are there to scout the place.
Why did Rahab hide spies who she knew to be with Jericho’s enemy? The Bible tells us at Joshua 2 that she knew the Lord had promised the land of Canaan to the Israelites and that the Canaanites feared them for that reason.
The little detail to which I want to focus your attention here in Rahab’s story concerns how she hid the spies, under flax. As Erik Manning of Is Jesus Alive? explains in the following video, this seemingly irrelevant detail actually tells us a great deal: