She SAID, v. 4 & 5, five [things]. In the first of which she confesses that which by the Royal informers and guards was objected. But instead of that which in the Hebrew is thus, “aut, etiam [or, indeed],” our Interpreter put the verb which, in an assent of this kind, and in a matter which as it were is objected, [is] customary [for] confession, “I confess [fateor]”; the 70 indeed, “the men came to me.” The remaining [things], which are four, all depart from the truth. First. “I knew not whence they were.” But just as the informers recognized them [as being] of the sons of Israel, so also she [did], and indeed much more, as she herself shows v. 9 & 10. Secondly. “And when the gate was being closed in the darkness, they also went out together.” But they were hiding at home; and to speak of the city gate [is] clear enough, as also concludes quest. 44 Abulensis. Thirdly. “I know not whither they are gone.” But [she] notes [them] to cling in the flat-roof. Fourthly. “Pursue [them] quickly, and you will catch them” — namely, [as if to say] “you depart hence, and you will fall upon them elsewhere,” [those] who elsewhere are not. There are, moreover, of these Rahab-words two opinions.
The first: [that] in these [words] this [woman] did not lie, because she said all these [things] of other guests, who at that time had set out of her lodging. So either Tremellius or Junius, in the annotation on this place: “This response — why we should establish [it] necessary [that] a liar be said [to be here] — I do not see. For others could have turned aside [lodged] at Rahab’s (namely, [as] a Caupona [innkeeper]), about whom she responded” — just as [it] is [proper] to divine providence [that] some guests be indicated from the truth, and others from faith and charity be dissimulated [concealed]. But this opinion is first based on that false [premise] of theirs, the “Caupona” foundation, which before [was] utterly removed, quest. 3. Secondly, from the context [it] clearly appears [that] Rahab responded about the same [men] about whom she was asked; for therefore, she says, “I confess,” and “you will catch them.” Thirdly. Be it [that] some cleverness of responding [is] permitted sometimes — [that] it is nonetheless not permitted, her patrons [defenders] do not confess, when [one is] legitimately interrogated [by one] who has legitimate power of interrogating,
(col. 352)
—as I expounded [on] Judith 13 q. 10. But to the Jericho[ite] King, and to his administers [officials], that power was indeed [theirs], and [they interrogated] in a manner consonant to [their] morals and laws. And thus, by those who deny [that] Rahab lied, one inconvenience indeed is fled [avoided], but into another [one it is] run — that I may be silent [about the fact that] they oppose their own master, Calvin. Therefore the other opinion — of all the others [the general view] — is [that] she lied; and [it is] confirmed enough from [things] now said.
Two opinions. The prior: [that] she lied, but without sin. So Joseph the Abbot in [i.e. cited by] Cassian collat. 17 ch. 17 — who, [being] once a chief of his own city, and diligently taught not only [in] Egyptian but even [in] Greek eloquence, as the same Cassianus writes collat. 16 ch. 1. For these [are] his words, [in] that former place: “Thus about a lie [it is] to be judged, and thus [it is] to be used, as if [it were] a hellebore [ellebori — a medicinal poison] by nature inborn to it. Which [hellebore], if [it] be taken [with] a deadly disease imminent, is healthful; but otherwise, [if taken] without the necessity of the highest danger, [it] is of present death [lethal]. For so indeed we read even holy and most approved-to-God men [to have] pardonably [venialiter] used a lie, like Rahab — of whom, since scripture commemorates not only no monument of virtues, but even [monuments] of unchastity — for such a lie, by which she preferred to hide the spies rather than betray [them], she merited to be admixed to the people of GOD by eternal benediction. Who, if she had preferred to speak the truth, or to consult [for] the safety of the citizens, [there is] no doubt but that neither would she have escaped the imminent destruction with her whole house, nor [would she have been] inserted among the authors of the Lord’s nativity, and enumerated in the catalogue of the patriarchs, [nor] have merited, through her descendant, to bring forth the Saviour of all. And again: Neither could Rahab have evaded death otherwise than by this remedy, nor Jacob arrive at the benediction of the firstborn. For God is not [only] a Judge, but also an inspector of the purpose and intent. Who, if he shall have seen something either done or promised for the cause of eternal safety and of divine contemplation — although to men [it] may seem hard and iniquitous — he nevertheless, inspecting the inmost of the heart, judges not the sound of the words, but the vow of the will; because the end of the work and effect is to be considered, by which some could, as above [was] said, even by a lie be justified, and others, by the assertion of the truth, incur the sin of perpetual death.” For “pardonable [veniabile]” by this author is called that which otherwise would be a sin, but now indeed is not — but to it [there] is pardon, or [rather] it is done [with] the good pardon and will of GOD: as from his whole disputation is patent, and likewise from this, that by that lie Rahab, [as] having merited so many and so great goods, he [Cassian] wills [her] — nay, [wills her] to be justified through the lie. But by a sin, however small and easily expiable, neither merit nor justification can be obtained. [It] would be another [thing] if, as Ambrose bk. 10 on Luke ch. 22 speaks, he called [it] a “veniable fault [veniabilem culpam],” or a sin, but “pardonable.” Nor does it stand in the way, that in the same ch. [Cassian] says: “those refuges of lies are to be admitted, yet so, that [as] guilty we be salubriously bitten [stung] by a humble conscience”; for [he] seems to exhort to fear, and to a humbling of the mind, not to a true acknowledgment of the fault. In this place too Chytraeus wills [that] Rahab’s lie did not displease God; but unknowingly and unlearnedly he confounds a lie with the silence of the arcane [keeping a secret].
The other opinion is [that] of St. Augustine, bk. Against Lying ch. 15, teaching [that it] was a lie, but “a minute [small] and pardonable one,” because officious [a helpful lie] — with whom [agree] Lyranus, Abulensis quaest. 33 & 38, and now the whole school of Theologians—
(col. 353)
—the school feels [holds this] not unwillingly. But since against [that] opinion I have said [otherwise] elsewhere, I say only this much: [that] this Rahab-lie is to be explained in that mode by which, [in] Exodus ch. 1, the midwives’ [nurses’] lie was explained — [namely] so that not to the sin itself, but to her faith, charity, hospitality, and to the whole good work to which by accident this sin was joined, praise and reward would be [given]. But let us hear that holy Doctor Augustine.
“That which, he says, is written — [that] God did well with the Hebrew midwives, and with Rahab the Jericho[ite] harlot — was not therefore done because they lied, but because toward men of God they were merciful. Not, therefore, in them was the fallacy remunerated, but the benevolence, the benignity of mind — not the iniquity of [the one] lying. For just as it would not be strange and absurd, if [some] evil works committed by them at another prior time GOD should wish to pardon on account of later good works: so [it] is not to be wondered at, that at one time, in one cause, God, beholding each — that is, [a thing] done mercifully, and [a thing] done fallaciously — both remunerated the good, and on account of this good pardoned that evil. For if sins which are done on account of the concupiscence of the flesh, not on account of mercy, are dismissed on account of later works of mercy, [how much more those] which are committed on account of mercy itself — for graver is the sin which is effected by the mind of [one] harming, than [that] which [is effected] by the mind of [one] succouring. And through this, if that [former sin] is deleted by a work of mercy afterward following, why is this [latter], which is lighter, not deleted by the very mercy of the man — both preceding [him] that he sin, and accompanying [him] when he sins? And afterward: It remains that we understand [that] to those women, whether in Egypt or in Jericho, for [their] humanity, mercy, a reward — a temporal one, to be sure — was returned; which [reward] indeed did itself also, by a prophetic signification, figure something eternal even to them unknowing. But whether one is ever to lie, even for anyone’s salvation — since it is a question in [the] resolving of which even the most learned are wearied — far exceeded the measure of those little women, constituted among those peoples and habituated to those morals. And so this their ignorance — just as of other matters which they likewise knew not, but which are to be known by the sons not of this age but of the future — the patience of GOD sustained: [God] who nevertheless returned to them, for the human benignity which they had expended upon his servants, earthly rewards — though [rewards] signifying something heavenly. And Rahab indeed, freed from Jericho, made [a] passage into the people of GOD; where, advancing, she might be able to arrive at eternal and immortal gifts, which are to be sought by no lie.”
And again, [in] ch. 17 of the same book — but [that] will be brought forward [in] the following question. Similar [things] Rupertus wills, bk. 2 ch. 11 (although there [there] are corruptions [in the text]). Calvin indeed seems to feel the same, yet so that he mixes in an error — as if, [when] sins are joined to a good work, there were no penalty, or, as he himself more ineptly speaks, “no imputation.” “The chief action,” he says, “[is] pleasing to GOD, because the vice admixed to the virtue is not imputed.”