Bible, Actually
Was Rahab a Prostitute or an Innkeeper? A Translation History
Rahab shelters Joshua’s spies, negotiates protection for her family, and recognizes Israel’s God. Later biblical writers remember her as an example of faith and action. Yet the word that introduces her in Joshua 2:1 has prompted readers to offer two very different job descriptions: prostitute or innkeeper.
These are not equally likely dictionary meanings of the Hebrew. They come from different stages in the interpretation of her story.
Unknown artist, Rahab and the Emissaries of Joshua, seventeenth century · Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes · Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain.
What Joshua calls her
Joshua introduces Rahab as an ishah zonah (אִשָּׁה זוֹנָה). The ordinary sense is “a woman who is a prostitute.” The word belongs to the Hebrew root associated with prostitution and sexual unfaithfulness. It does not ordinarily mean someone who provides food or lodging. Richard S. Hess’s commentary on Joshua accepts this straightforward sense.
The ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint, also uses porne (πόρνη), “prostitute.” That matters because the direct wording was present in the Greek scriptural tradition well before the New Testament. It is not a reading created by modern translators or by the medieval manuscripts that preserve the Masoretic Text.
The innkeeper in later retellings
Josephus, writing Jewish Antiquities in the first century CE, presents the spies as entering an inn and describes Rahab as its keeper (5.1.2). His account retells biblical history for a different audience; it is not simply a word-for-word translation of Joshua.
Targum Jonathan on Joshua 2:1 likewise uses pundekita, an Aramaic term for a female innkeeper. The Targum’s received form is later than the New Testament, although it contains older traditions. It should therefore not be treated as a text Hebrews and James demonstrably knew and deliberately rejected.
Why the difference? An innkeeper’s house provides an understandable setting for travelers to arrive. A more respectable description may also reflect Rahab’s honored place in later interpretation. Lodging and prostitution could overlap in some ancient settings, so the descriptions need not always have been mutually exclusive. But that possibility neither proves what business Rahab ran nor turns “innkeeper” into the normal lexical meaning of zonah. The precise motives of these retellings remain an interpretive question.
The New Testament’s emphasis
Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25 both call Rahab porne, consistent with the Septuagint’s wording. Hebrews emphasizes her faith; James points to her reception and protection of the messengers. Neither passage offers a discussion of her occupation or explains why it retains the familiar designation.
We can observe that these authors do not erase the label. We cannot confidently infer a conscious polemic against Josephus or a later Targum. Their concern is what Rahab believed and did in a moment of danger.
More than a label
A careful reading does not need to sanitize Rahab’s introduction. It also should not reduce her to it, speculate about her sexual history, or assume that her occupation explains her character. Joshua gives her a decisive voice: she understands the threat to Jericho, protects the visitors, and acts for her household’s survival.
The translation history shows how easily admiration for a biblical figure can reshape the way readers introduce her. Reading the sources in sequence lets Rahab’s action and confession remain central. Didymus Lab offers original-language and historical resources for this kind of sermon preparation.
References
- Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 5.1.2.
- Targum Jonathan, Joshua 2:1; Septuagint, Joshua 2:1; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25.
- Richard S. Hess, Joshua: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries; IVP, 1996).
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