In the line of Jesus
Rahab
Rahab of Jericho is named as the mother of Boaz (Matthew 1:5). In Joshua's account she is a Canaanite and a prostitute, a woman of the very nation Israel was sent to drive out. Yet she hid Israel's spies, confessed their God, and was spared when her city fell. From her came the line of David.
“And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;”Matthew 1:5
The story
Before Israel crossed into the promised land, Joshua sent two spies into Jericho, and they lodged at the house of Rahab, a prostitute whose home was built into the city wall (Joshua 2:1). When the king's men came searching, she hid the spies under stalks of flax on her roof and sent the hunters off on a false trail. Then she told the men why: she had heard how the LORD dried up the Red Sea and defeated kings, and she knew Jericho was doomed. She asked only that her household be spared. They agreed, giving her a scarlet cord to hang in her window. When the walls fell, Rahab and her family were saved (Joshua 6:22 to 25), the one Canaanite household drawn out of a city under judgment.
The grace hidden here
By every category that mattered in Israel, Rahab was excluded. Wrong nation. Wrong trade. Wrong gods. She was exactly the kind of person the conquest was meant to remove. And God saved her, married her into His people, and set her in the ancestry of the Messiah. Her faith, not her record, is what Scripture praises later (Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25). Grace here means that no birth, no border, and no past occupation can shut a person out of God's family when they turn to Him. The scarlet cord in her window was mercy hanging in plain sight over a life the world had written off.
How it points to Christ
The scarlet cord has long been read as a quiet picture of the blood of Christ. Rahab was safe not because she earned it but because a mark of rescue hung over her house, exactly as Israel's doorposts were marked at Passover. So it is with the Savior descended from her: those who take refuge under His blood are passed over by judgment, whatever their history. Rahab the Canaanite becomes great-great-grandmother to King David and an ancestor of Jesus (Matthew 1:5). In Christ the outsider is brought inside, the foreigner made family. The One who came from a Gentile prostitute would open His kingdom to every nation. Her rescue was the first small draft of the wideness of His mercy.
Questions people ask
Was Rahab a prostitute in the Bible?
Yes. Joshua 2:1 plainly calls Rahab a prostitute (harlot) living in Jericho. The Bible does not soften this. It is precisely her honesty about her situation and her faith in Israel's God that Scripture holds up (Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25). God did not require her to have a clean past before rescuing her and grafting her into Messiah's line.
How is Rahab related to Jesus?
Matthew 1:5 names Rahab as the wife of Salmon and mother of Boaz. Boaz married Ruth; their son Obed was the grandfather of King David, from whose line Jesus was born. So Rahab the Canaanite of Jericho is a direct ancestor of Christ, one of several women who carry the theme of grace through Matthew's genealogy.