Rahab's Scarlet Cord
“Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by: and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee.”
Joshua 2:18 · KJV
Rahab hid the two spies and asked one thing: that when Israel took Jericho, her house would be spared. They told her to bind a scarlet cord in the window, and to bring her family inside. When the walls fell, her house stood.
The Hebrew word for the cord, *tiqvah*, is the ordinary word for hope. It is the same word translated “hope” all through Job and the Psalms (“my hope is in thee”). Rahab hung her hope out the window, red, the color of blood, in the wall of a doomed city, and it was the one house on the wall that did not fall (Josh 6:20-23). She, a Gentile and a harlot, is in the line of Christ (Matt 1:5) and in the hall of faith (Heb 11:31). The scarlet cord in the window is the Passover blood on the door, said again.