ah, so why the interest now? guess i could backtrack and see lol. anyway, kinda interesting imo
"
The famous Rahab is really Rachab (with a
ch as in Bach or Loch). This Rahab is a prostitute in
Jericho. When
Joshua sends two unnamed spies to Jericho to check out the town, their area of reconnaissance is confined mostly to the house of Rahab, who, we shall assume, also ran a youth hostel. When the townsfolk of Jericho pursue the men, Rahab hides them safely under flax on the roof. When
Israel destroys the walls of Jericho, Rahab's house, now marked with a scarlet cord, remains intact and Rahab and her household are incorporated into Israel.
This Rahab is referred to in the New Testament by
Paul (
HEBREWS 11:31) and by
James (
2:25), and both call her Ρααβ, which shows that the
Hebrew ch-sound became a guttural stop sound in Greek: Ra'ab. This Greek version of Rahab is also the one employed by the Septuagint's version of the book of Joshua. The Vulgate reads the
Latinized Raab.
But the Rahab who
Matthew famously mentions in the genealogy of
Jesus, as the mother of
Boaz of
Bethlehem(
MATTHEW 1:5) is spelled Ραχαβ: Rachab. Most commentators will report that the Rahab in
Christ's family line is the converted Rahab the prostitute of Jericho, but that is by no means certain because Matthew uses the other version of the name Rahab (what we call Rahab II: רהב). In English these names sound the same but in Hebrew and Greek they're as different as Johnny and Ronnie.
And if Rahab of Jericho had married someone important, such as
Salmon, the great-grandfather of king
David(Ruth 4:20), we would have surely heard about it at some point in the fifteen hundred years or so between Rahab of Jericho and Matthew. In
HEBREWS 11:31 Paul says that Rahab's
faith kept her from perishing along with the rest of the disobedient townsfolk. If her survival would have given her the opportunity to become the ancestor of Jesus Christ, Paul would have likely made a note of that too. It seems that Matthew isn't talking about Rahab of Jericho but of an other, to us unknown Rahab..."
"
The lesser known Rahab, spelled רהב and indeed pronounced as Rahab, is a poetic nickname for
Egypt, or rather the wisdom tradition of Egypt. It occurs in Psalm 87:4, 89:10, Isaiah 30:7, 51:9, Job 9:13 and 26:12. In the latter verses of
Job and
Isaiah, God cuts her to pieces and Isaiah equates her with the dragon (תנין,
tanin) of old that was pierced.
The name רהב (Rahab the primeval serpent) comes from the verb רהב (
rahab), meaning to behave proudly in the sense of arrogant:..."
The amazing name Rahab: meaning and etymology
ah, so