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\u201c\u2026the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.\xa0Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them\u2014and that you will save us from death.\u201d \u201cOur lives for your lives!\u201d the men assured her.\xa0 \u2026\xa0 \u201cAgreed,\u201d she replied. \u201cLet it be as you say.\u201d So she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window. (Joshua 2:11b-14a, 21)

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Rahab the prostitute, hanging by a thread at the approach of the army of Israel who intended to raze Jericho to the ground.\xa0

Rahab clearly didn\u2019t hold a high position in her ancient society.\xa0 She was likely assumed to be a woman of dubious character.\xa0 She quite likely was a victim of circumstances out of her control that placed her in this profession.\xa0 Economic hardship.\xa0 No husband to guard her rights.\xa0 A prostitute.\xa0

And yet, Rahab the prostitute gives a full and sincere confession of faith in the God of Israel, nearly as strong a confession as anyone else in the book of Joshua as she speaks to the sovereignty and power of the Lord who will give this new land to his people.\xa0

She trusted this Lord she had only ever heard about, and she entrusted herself to his people.\xa0 \u201cGive me a sure sign\u2026 that you will save us from death,\u201d she says.\xa0 And the sign they give her is a sign that oddly reverberates with the crimson blood of the lambs smeared over the entry ways of the Israelites on the night of Passover.\xa0 In her window she is to tie a scarlet cord, and huddle inside behind locked doors with her whole family as the Israelites did on the night of their salvation.\xa0

But this cord signifies more.\xa0 This story is the second instance of this Hebrew word for hope.\xa0 Where is that word in this story?\xa0 The \u201cscarlet cord.\u201d\xa0 There are actually three words here in the Hebrew.\xa0 One of them means thread, one of them means scarlet, and the last of them has a root which means \u201cto be tense/rigid,\u201d or by extension \u201cto be expectant.\u201d\xa0 That last one is our word for hope, and is indeed translated as hope elsewhere in the Bible.\xa0

Rahab the prostitute, hanging by a scarlet thread of hope in the Lord, even as the walls were quite literally about to collapse around her, putting an end to life as she\u2019d known it.\xa0 But that scarlet thread of hope playing gently in the wind was also the promise that a new life was coming.\xa0 \xa0

Even when a thread is all you seem to be holding on by: it\u2019s enough.\xa0 Hope in God never comes with much in this life we can lay our hands on, just a thin whisp of scarlet hope.\xa0 But as these members of Jesus\u2019 own genealogy\u2014Rahab, Jacob, and Ruth\u2014would discover: God is faithful.\xa0 The Lord delivers.\xa0 A hope in him, threadbare though it may be, is never misplaced.

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