Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
this explanation in v. 6: she had hidden them upon the roof of her house among stalks
of flax. The expression "to-night" (lit., the night) in v. 2 is more precisely defined in
v. 5, viz., as night was coming on, before the town-gate was shut, after which it
would have been in vain for them to attempt to leave the town. "Stalks of flax," not
"cotton pods" ( Arab., J. D. Mich. ), or "tree-flax, i.e., cotton," as Thenius explains it,
but flax stalks or stalk-flax, as distinguished from carded flax, in which there is no
wood left, linokala'mee , stipula lini (LXX, Vulg. ).
Flax stalks, which grow to the height of three or four feet in Egypt, and attain the
thickness of a reed, and would probably be quite as large in the plain of Jericho, the
climate of which resembles that of Egypt, would form a very good hiding-place for
the spies if they were piled up upon the roof to dry in the sun. The falsehood by
which Rahab sought not only to avert all suspicion from herself of any conspiracy
with the Israelitish men who had entered her house, but to prevent any further search
for them in her house, and to frustrate the attempt to arrest them, is not to be justified
as a lie of necessity told for a good purpose, nor, as Grotius maintains, by the
unfounded assertion that, "before the preaching of the gospel, a salutary lie was not
regarded as a fault even by good men." Nor can it be shown that it was thought
"allowable," or even "praiseworthy," simply because the writer mentions the fact
without expressing any subjective opinion, or because, as we learn from what follows
(vv. 9ff.), Rahab was convinced of the truth of the miracles which God had wrought
for His people, and acted in firm faith that the true God would give the land of
Canaan to the Israelites, and that all opposition made to them would be vain, and
would be, in fact, rebellion against the Almighty God himself. For a lie is always a
sin. Therefore even if Rahab was not actuated at all by the desire to save herself and
her family from destruction, and the motive from which she acted had its roots in her
faith in the living God (Heb 11:31), so that what she did for the spies, and
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