Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

This possible mention of Rahab's descendants is interesting. (I note 
that NRSV read "Her family" at Joshua 6:25, with "She" in a footnote.) 
For according to the tradition preserved in the New Testament in 
Matthew 1:5, Rahab was the wife of Salmon and mother of Boaz who 
married Ruth (compare Ruth 4:21, 1 Chronicles 2:11). In this case the 
line of Rahab's descendants, which may be referred to in Joshua 6:25, 
is none other than the royal line of the house of David. But is there 
any trace of this tradition in Jewish sources or in anything prior to 
the New Testament?

Actually I suppose this descent from a prostitute could even be 
alluded to in Psalm 51: it was not David's mother who was a 
prostitute, as some have suggested, but a more remote ancestor, but he 
feels the shame and defilement as if the guilty one were his own 
mother.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: `ad hayom hazeh
Author:  <alster AT comandcom.com> at Internet
Date:    08/02/2000 12:00


George Athas wrote:

> Yet, compare Josh 6:25 which states that Rahab the whore lived in Israel 
`ad hayyom
> hazzeh. Does this mean that Joshua was written within a generation of 
Jericho's
> destruction (if we can at all talk of that)? Or are we saying that an 
oral tradition goes
> back to that generation?

 Abravanel, interestingly enough, does not comment on this instance.  I
would say it was referring to something known at the time of authorship of 
this specific story - either this is an oral tradition from Rahab's time, 
or the verse is referring to whom he saw as her descendants.

Kol Tuv,
Baruch Alster
Kochav Ya`akov, Israel


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