How Is Rahab Related to Jesus?

Rahab is the mother of Boaz, which makes her the great-great-grandmother of King David and an ancestor of Jesus on the list Matthew opens his Gospel with. She is a Canaanite, a woman of Jericho, and the text calls her a harlot in the same breath it first gives her name.

The chain is one verse long, and Matthew is the only book that states it. Joshua tells her story and then stops, with her still living “in Israel even unto this day”; it never says whom she married or what became of her house. The answer is in the New Testament, and it is a larger answer than a footnote in a genealogy.

The short answer

Rahab married Salmon, of the tribe of Judah. Their son was Boaz, who married Ruth. Boaz’s son was Obed; Obed’s son was Jesse; Jesse’s son was David. Matthew gives the first link and the next two in a single verse:

“And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;”Matthew 1:5, KJV

From David, Matthew’s list runs on through Solomon and the kings of Judah to Joseph, the husband of Mary. Rahab stands four generations above David and thirty-one above Jesus on that list. The Old Testament gives the same men at the end of Ruth — Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David — without naming a mother:

“And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.”Ruth 4:21–22, KJV

Ruth does not mention her. Chronicles does not mention her. Between the last verse of her story in Joshua and the first page of the Gospel there is nothing — until Matthew writes her name into the line.

The house on the wall

Joshua sends two spies into Jericho from Shittim, and the first thing they do in the city is go to her:

“And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there.”Joshua 2:1, KJV

The king of Jericho hears of it the same night and sends to her house. She has already hidden the men under the stalks of flax drying on her roof, and she tells the king’s messengers that yes, men came, and left at dusk as the gate was shutting — go quickly and you will overtake them. The pursuit goes out toward the Jordan and the gate is shut behind it. Then the book explains how the spies will get out at all:

“Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house [was] upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall.”Joshua 2:15, KJV

A house built into the wall, a window facing out, a cord. That is the geography of everything that follows — the escape, the scarlet line, and the one house left standing when the wall comes down.

What she said

Before she lets them go she tells them why she is doing it, and it is not the speech of a frightened woman hedging her bets:

“And as soon as we had heard [these things], our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he [is] God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.”Joshua 2:11, KJV

That confession is the hinge of the chapter: a Canaanite, in a Canaanite city, using Israel’s name for God, forty years after the Red Sea, on the strength of what she has heard. And then she asks for something in return — not for herself alone:

“Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the LORD, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give me a true token:”Joshua 2:12, KJV

Her father, her mother, her brothers, her sisters, and all they have. The spies agree, on a condition: a scarlet cord in the window, and everyone she wants saved inside the house.

“And she said, According unto your words, so [be] it. And she sent them away, and they departed: and she bound the scarlet line in the window.”Joshua 2:21, KJV

When the wall fell

Six days of marching, and on the seventh, at the seventh circuit, in the order to shout, Joshua names her out loud in front of the whole army:

“And the city shall be accursed, [even] it, and all that [are] therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that [are] with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.”Joshua 6:17, KJV

The two spies go back into the city for her and bring out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brethren and all that she had, and set them outside the camp of Israel. The last word Joshua has on her is this:

“And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.”Joshua 6:25, KJV

“Unto this day.” Whoever wrote that line knew her family was still there, still living among Israel, long after the wall. What the book does not say is how — whom she married, which tribe took her in, what became of her house. That is the gap Matthew fills.

Into the line

Matthew, listing the fathers from Abraham down to David, gives her a husband and gives the husband a father:

“And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon;”Matthew 1:4, KJV

Then the next verse: “Salmon begat Booz of Rachab.” Ruth 4:20 gives the same father, Nahshon — and Nahshon is not an obscure name. He is the man the wilderness books put at the head of Judah:

“And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah;”1 Chronicles 2:10, KJV

Nahshon leads Judah’s camp on the march (Numbers 2:3) and brings the first offering at the dedication of the altar (Numbers 7:12). And Exodus gives his sister a husband:

“And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Naashon, to wife; and she bare him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.”Exodus 6:23, KJV

Elisheba, Nahshon’s sister, is the wife of Aaron, the first high priest. So the Canaanite woman from the house on the wall does not marry at the edge of Israel. She marries the son of the prince of Judah — the high priest’s nephew by marriage — and her son is the Boaz who will meet Ruth in a barley field at Bethlehem.

Three things a careful reader would check. One: Matthew writes “Rachab” and never says “of Jericho.” Identifying his Rachab with the Rahab of Joshua — the same woman Hebrews 11 and James 2 name — is ancient and all but universal, but it is an identification, and this article treats it as one. Two: Chronicles spells the husband “Salma” (1 Chronicles 2:11) where Ruth and Matthew have “Salmon”; same man, two spellings. Three: four names carry the line from Jericho to David across the whole period of the Judges. Hebrew genealogies routinely skip generations, and Matthew’s own “fourteen generations” (1:17) are a count of the names he chose to keep — so these are the names the text preserves, not necessarily every father in the chain.

The faith chapter and the works chapter

Here is the part that almost never gets told. Rahab is named twice more in the New Testament, both times in exalted company. Hebrews 11, the chapter of faith, runs from Abel through Abraham, Moses and the judges to David and Samuel, and among all those names it holds up two women. One is Sarah. The other:

“By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.”Hebrews 11:31, KJV

Then James, arguing the other side of the same question — that faith without works is dead — reaches for exactly two examples. The first is Abraham offering Isaac (James 2:21). The second:

“Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent [them] out another way?”James 2:25, KJV

The Canaanite harlot of Jericho is the New Testament’s standing example, alongside Abraham, in both the chapter on faith and the chapter on works. Neither writer softens her description. Both keep “the harlot” in the sentence, exactly as Joshua did — and Matthew, who leaves Bathsheba unnamed, writes Rahab’s name out in full. She is one of the four women in his genealogy, and the only one of the four whose story is told outside the line of Judah entirely.

A note on the word. The Hebrew of Joshua 2:1 is the ordinary word for a prostitute, and the King James, the Reina-Valera and the Union Version all render it that way. Josephus and the Aramaic Targum read her instead as an innkeeper, and that reading is still offered; Hebrews and James use the plain Greek word, so the New Testament did not take the softer option. A separate rabbinic tradition (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 14b–15a) has her converting and marrying Joshua himself, with prophets and priests among her descendants. Matthew says Salmon. That is a tradition set against a text, and this article follows the text.

Trace it yourself

“Boaz’s mother” answers the question in two words. What it cannot show is the shape: a house built into a city wall, a cord out of a window, a family walked out of a city under the ban, a marriage into the first family of Judah, and a name that surfaces again on the first page of the New Testament and twice more before its end.

Open the map on Boaz and follow the line down through Ruth, Obed and Jesse to David, then on to Jesus, with the verse behind every link available as you go. Joshua is on the map too, if you would rather start from the man who sent the spies. Rahab has her own page as well — Rahab — with her relationships and every passage she appears in.

The free map opens on the 104 key figures; Boaz, Ruth, Obed, Jesse, David, Joshua and Jesus are all among them, so the whole line from Jericho to Bethlehem traces without an account and without paying. Rahab herself is part of the full set of 152 that Sacred Scholar unlocks, and keeps her public figure page either way.

Open the family tree