A New Citizenship

We saw in yesterday’s study that the unusual context of Rahab’s encounter with the spies was holy war. God was using the Israelites to judge the Canaanites and to cleanse a land where they could live holy lives before Him. But how does this fact affect the propriety of Rahab’s lies?

As a Canaanite woman, Rahab was condemned under the herem. But as we saw in a study earlier this month, her great confession—“ ‘The LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath’ ”—indicates that she had placed her faith in God. Because faith is a gift of God, it is apparent that God had regenerated her spiritually. He had changed her citizenship from the city of man to the city of God. She had become one of God’s people, and therefore she had a duty to conform her life to God’s purposes as closely as possible. Therefore, in disobeying the king of Jericho and in harboring enemies of the king, she was being obedient to God. In this situation (as in few others), the divine directive of warfare against the Canaanites made it proper for her to lie to protect the two Israelite spies. “Rahab knew, by what was already done on the other side [of] Jordan, that no mercy was to be shown to the Canaanites, and thence inferred that, if mercy was not owing them, truth was not; those that might be destroyed might be deceived,” Matthew Henry writes in his commentary.

Other incidents in Scripture reinforce that circumstances may permit untruths to be told. In Exodus 1, the Egyptian Pharaoh commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill male babies, but they disobeyed and lied about it. Clearly Pharaoh’s command was wrong, and “God dealt well with the midwives” (Ex. 1:20) for their actions. And in another instance of untruth in a time of conflict, Gideon won a great victory by tricking the Midianites into thinking his small force of men was a much greater host (Judg. 7). This, too, was a form of untruth.

Henry adds an invaluable caveat as we consider how the story of Rahab’s lie should guide our own lives: “This case was altogether extraordinary, and therefore cannot be drawn into a precedent. However it was in this case, we are sure it is our duty to speak every man the truth to his neighbor, to dread and detest lying, and never to do evil … that good may come of it (Rom. 3:8).”