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| Ruins of Beit Shean |
Everybody knows the story of the battle.
"And the walls came tumbling down!"
Rahab, the harlot, had a house built in the walls.
It was in these very walls she hid the spies and joined her lot to Israel's.
She first lived her faith there, within the walls.
And it was in the walls, in her home, that the spies told her she would be saved.
Between 1929 and 1936, Jericho's ruins were excavated.
Its destruction was dated to roughly 1400 B.C.
The walls had fallen down flat.
They were double, with an outer wall 6 feet thick,
and an inner wall 12 feet thick --
both about 30 feet high.
They were 15 feet apart, linked by the houses built into the top.
There, at the point of attack,
she huddled in her house with her family, awaiting her salvation.
The spies didn't tell her to hide in the center of town --
away from the crashing walls.
But right there in the chaos and destruction, she was safe.
They burned the city: the outer walls suffered the worst of the fire.
Houses alongside the wall were burned to the ground.
"The stratum generally was covered with a deep layer of black burnt debris,
under which were pockets of white ash,
overlaid with a layer of fallen reddish brick." (Haley's Bible Handbook)
But the scarlet cord she had hung out her window
marked her trust of the God who broke her walls down,
and took her out of that doomed city.
But the just shall live by faith.
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