Joshua 2:2-7

2:2 The king of Jericho received this report: “Note well! ¹  Israelite men have come here tonight ²  to spy on the land.” 2:3 So the king of Jericho sent this order to Rahab: ³  “Turn over ⁴  the men who came to you ⁵  – the ones who came to your house ⁶  – for they have come to spy on the whole land!” 2:4 But the woman hid the two men ⁷  and replied, “Yes, these men were clients of mine, ⁸  but I didn’t know where they came from. 2:5 When it was time to shut the city gate for the night, the men left. ⁹  I don’t know where they were heading. Chase after them quickly, for you have time to catch them!” 2:6 (Now she had taken them up to the roof and had hidden them in the stalks of flax she had spread out ¹⁰  on the roof.) 2:7 Meanwhile ¹¹  the king’s men tried to find them on the road to the Jordan River ¹²  near the fords. ¹³  The city gate was shut as soon as they set out in pursuit of them. ¹⁴ 

¹ tn Or “look.”

² tn Heb “men have come here tonight from the sons of Israel.”

³ tn Heb “and the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying.”

⁴ tn Heb “bring out.”

⁵ tn The idiom “come to” (בוֹא אֶל, bo’ ’el) probably has sexual connotations here, as it often does elsewhere when a man “comes to” a woman. If so, the phrase could be translated “your clients.” The instructions reflect Rahab’s perspective as to the identity of the men.

⁶ tn The words “the ones who came to your house” (Heb “who came to your house”) may be a euphemistic scribal addition designed to blur the sexual connotation of the preceding words.

⁵ tn Heb “The woman took the two men and hid him.” The third masculine singular pronominal suffix on “hid” has to be a scribal error (see GKC §135.p).

⁶ tn Heb “the men came to me.” See the note on this phrase in v. 3.

⁷ tn Heb “And the gate was to be shut in the darkness and the men went out.”

⁹ tn Heb “arranged in rows by her.”

¹¹ tn Another way to translate vv. 6-7 would be, “While she took them up to the roof and hid them…, the king’s men tried to find them….” Both of the main clauses have the subject prior to the predicate, perhaps indicating simultaneous action. (On the grammatical point, see R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 42, §235.) In this case Rahab moves the Israelite spies from the hiding place referred to in v. 4 to a safer and less accessible hiding place.

¹² tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied for clarity.

¹³ tn Heb “And the men chased after them [on] the road [leading to] the Jordan to the fords.” The text is written from the perspective of the king’s men. As far as they were concerned, they were chasing the spies.

¹⁴ tn Heb “And they shut the gate after – as soon as the ones chasing after them went out.” The expressions “after” and “as soon as” may represent a conflation of alternate readings.