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Ch. 2 recounts Joshua’s sending of two spies into Jericho. In an approach from the east, Jericho is the key to the hill country. It could not be bypassed. Like any good military commander, Joshua needed information about his objective.
The two men—6:23 refers to them as young men—came into the house of Rahab, who was a harlot. A harlot’s house would be a place for strangers to avoid unwanted attention. Josephus relates the tradition that Rahab was also an innkeeper; women sometimes were both harlots and innkeepers in the ancient Near East.
Rahab’s statements to the spies indicate how much God’s acts on Israel’s behalf, even in an earlier generation, had inspired fear in the inhabitants of Canaan. They recognized the parting of the Red Sea and the destruction of the kingdoms of Sihon and Og as the work of a God much greater than their own.
V.11 also contains Rahab’s personal confession of faith, The Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. This declaration of faith, shown to be genuine by her aid to the spies, brought Rahab, despite her Canaanite birth and her profession, into the people of God. Though Canaan as a whole was under judgment, individual Canaanites would be saved by faith in Israel’s God.
The author notes (6:25) that Rahab was spared: She lives among the Israelites to this day. If the book was written after her death, this means she lived through her descendants. Matthew tells us (1:5) that Rahab was the mother of Boaz.
More than a third of the chapter details provisions of the promise to spare the lives of Rahab and her family. This again demonstrates Rahab’s faith in Israel and Israel’s God. It also shows the seriousness of an oath taken in God’s name.