“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace.”— Hebrews 11:30–31
By the time we reach Hebrews 11:30, Israel has crossed the Red Sea and come through the wilderness. The next great obstacle is Jericho.
Jericho was a fortified city standing in the way of Israel’s entrance into the land God had promised. Yet the writer of Hebrews gives us only one sentence about its fall:
“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down.”
That description is important because the strategy God gave Israel was hardly a conventional way to capture a fortified city. They were to march around Jericho once each day for six days. On the seventh day they were to go around seven times, the priests were to blow their trumpets, the people were to shout, and the wall would fall.
From a military standpoint, walking around a wall does not weaken it. Israel’s marching did not gradually damage Jericho’s defenses. The trumpets did not have some physical power capable of bringing stone walls down.
They did what God told them because they believed Him.
Hebrews therefore does not say, “By their great works the walls of Jericho fell.” It says by faith.
Their actions were certainly involved. Faith was not passivity. Israel actually had to walk around the city, and on the seventh day they had to act upon what God had said. But their actions only make sense because they trusted a promise that was beyond their ability to accomplish for themselves.
This distinction between faith and works has been running throughout Hebrews 11.
Noah built because he believed God concerning something he had not yet seen. Abraham left his homeland because he believed God’s promise. Moses walked away from Egypt because he regarded what God had promised as greater than Egypt’s treasures. Israel crossed the Red Sea because God opened a way where there had been none.
Now they stand before a wall they cannot bring down themselves.
God tells them what He will do, they take Him at His word, and the wall falls.
Faith Does Not Mean We Do Nothing
There are two mistakes we can make when talking about grace and faith.
One is to turn faith into works. In that version of Christianity, God’s goodness toward us is ultimately determined by how successfully we perform. Faith becomes another item on the list of things we must do well enough to persuade God to act.
The other mistake is to assume that because everything is by grace, faith never results in action.
Jericho gives us a much better picture.
Israel’s marching did not earn the miracle, but believing God affected what they did.
If they had said, “We believe God will give us Jericho,” and then remained in their tents, that would hardly resemble the faith described in Hebrews. They walked because they believed.
The order matters.
Faith did not make their human effort powerful enough to destroy the wall. Their actions were a response to what God had said He would do.
That continues to be relevant under the New Covenant. Grace does not make us passive. Trusting Christ can profoundly affect our choices, relationships, generosity, willingness to forgive, and courage to move forward when circumstances are intimidating. None of those things earns our standing with God. They grow out of the relationship He has already given us in Christ.
Then Hebrews Introduces Rahab
Immediately after the fall of Jericho, Hebrews turns our attention to one woman:
“By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace.”
Of all the people the writer could have mentioned, Rahab is remarkable.
She was not an Israelite. She lived in Jericho.
And Hebrews does not clean up her history before placing her in the chapter. It simply calls her Rahab the prostitute.
If Hebrews 11 were intended to prove that God works through people because they have established sufficiently righteous records, Rahab would be a rather strange person to include.
Yet there she is beside Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses.
What distinguished Rahab was not an impressive religious history.
It was faith.
What Rahab Had Heard About God
Joshua 2 gives us the background.
When Israelite spies entered Jericho, Rahab hid them. She then explained why:
“I know that the LORD has given you the land.”
— Joshua 2:9
She had heard what God had done at the Red Sea and what had happened to the kings east of the Jordan.
Then she made an extraordinary confession:
“For the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.”— Joshua 2:11
Rahab had not crossed the Red Sea.
She had not been present at Sinai OR travelled through the wilderness with Israel. Nothing!
She heard what God had done and believed.
The people of Jericho had apparently heard many of the same reports. Rahab says that fear had fallen upon the city because of Israel. The difference was what she did with what she heard.
She became persuaded that Israel’s God was the true God and acted accordingly.
Amazing!
Rahab’s Past Did Not Get the Final Word
There is something particularly beautiful about Rahab appearing in Hebrews 11.
Her past was real. Scripture does not rewrite it or pretend that prostitution was somehow righteous. But neither does her past prevent her from becoming an example of faith.
Grace has room for people with histories.
I once remember a well-known Pastor who was bragging that all the people in the leadership of his church didn’t have a “past” before coming to Christ. Even before they were saved, they were from good upbringing and he was slyly looking down on people who had a past.
But that’s legalism, not God.
Rahab believed God, welcomed the spies, and asked that her family be spared when Israel took the city. The spies told her to place a scarlet cord in her window and gather her family inside the house.
When Jericho fell, that house became a place of safety.
Rahab’s story therefore sits naturally within the larger biblical story of grace. God has never been restricted to working with people who first make themselves impressive enough for Him.
Abraham had his failures. Jacob had his. Even Moses had his. Rahab’s history was different, but the principle Hebrews emphasizes is the same.
By faith.
Rahab Was Remembered for Something Better
Rahab’s story does not end with her escape from Jericho.
She became part of Israel.
Even more remarkably, Matthew includes her in the genealogy of Jesus:
“Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab.”— Matthew 1:5
The woman who once lived as a prostitute in a condemned city eventually appears in the family line through which Christ entered the world.
That is quite a journey.
The New Testament mentions Rahab more than once when discussing faith. James also points to her when explaining how genuine faith expresses itself in action. She believed something about Israel’s God, and because she believed it, she took a considerable risk by receiving and protecting the spies.
Her works did not purchase grace. They revealed what she had come to believe.
This is the same relationship between faith and action that we have repeatedly seen throughout Hebrews 11.
Jericho and Rahab Tell Two Sides of the Same Story
There is an interesting contrast in these two verses.
Verse 30 shows an entire city falling.
Verse 31 shows one woman being rescued from inside it.
The same God is involved in both.
Rahab had lived among the people of Jericho, but faith changed where she stood when judgment came.
Hebrews describes those who perished as “those who were disobedient.” Rahab, by contrast, believed what she had heard about God.
This fits with a theme that Hebrews has already developed. Earlier, when discussing Israel’s failure in the wilderness, the writer says:
“So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.”— Hebrews 3:19
Hebrews 4:2 adds that the good news they heard did not benefit them because it was not united with faith in those who heard.
The issue keeps returning to believing God.
Rahab heard and believed.
The New Covenant Gives Us an Even Greater Reason to Trust
Rahab believed on the basis of what she had heard God had done.
We have been given something even greater to look at.
We know Jesus Christ crucified and risen.
We know that He offered Himself once for all. We know that our sins have been forgiven and that righteousness is given through faith rather than earned through law. We know that God has brought us into a New Covenant resting upon the finished work of His Son.
Faith under this covenant is not an attempt to persuade God to become gracious toward us.
We begin with grace.
That is why Christian growth cannot simply be another version of Israel standing at Sinai trying to keep enough laws to maintain God’s acceptance.
The New Covenant begins with what Christ has accomplished.
As we become persuaded of that reality, it changes how we live.
Sometimes the change is dramatic. At other times it happens slowly as our minds are renewed and old ways of thinking lose their hold on us. Either way, the Christian life grows from trusting what God has already made true in Christ.
The Wall Was God’s Work
I keep coming back to the walls of Jericho because they give us such a clear picture.
Israel walked.
God brought down the wall.
Those two facts do not compete with each other.
Their faith had an expression, but the power was never in their marching.
This is where we can become confused in the Christian life. We see that faith produces action and gradually begin trusting the action instead. Before long, we are measuring God’s acceptance by our Bible reading, prayer, giving, church attendance, self-discipline or success in overcoming a particular sin.
Good things quietly become the basis of our confidence.
Hebrews keeps pulling us back.
The heroes of faith acted, sometimes at enormous personal cost, but their confidence was in God.
Under the New Covenant, our confidence has an even clearer object: Jesus Christ and His finished work.
Faith Takes God Seriously
Hebrews 11:30–31 gives us two very different pictures of what faith can look like.
For Israel, it meant walking around a city whose walls they could not bring down.
For Rahab, it meant taking the side of Israel’s God while she was still living inside that city.
Neither knew every detail of what was going to happen. They simply became persuaded that what God had said was more reliable than what their circumstances suggested.
That is still at the heart of faith.
We do not need to manufacture some enormous spiritual force called faith. Nor do we earn God’s intervention by accumulating enough good works.
We hear what God has revealed, and we learn to trust Him.
For us, the clearest revelation of His heart is Jesus.
When our circumstances seem immovable, we can trust Him without pretending the wall isn’t there. When our past makes us feel disqualified, Rahab reminds us that grace has never depended upon having an impressive history.
Jericho’s walls eventually disappeared.
Rahab’s past did not.
Scripture continued to remember where she had come from, but it remembered something greater alongside it:
Rahab believed God.
Centuries later, when Hebrews gathered together the great witnesses of faith, the former prostitute from Jericho was still there.
Not because she had finally produced a perfect record.
Because she had faith in the God who saves.
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