St. Augustine, bk. Against Lying ch. 17, teaches [that] the spies could have been preserved by God without any lie of Rahab herself, and [that] her own bodily [life], and their life, was rather to be exposed to the most present peril of death, than that Rahab should tell a lie. But the whole disputation cannot be set forth either more subtly or more clearly than by his own very words. They, therefore, are [these]:
“But someone will say: Then would those midwives, and Rahab, have done better if they had rendered no mercy, by being unwilling to lie? Nay rather, those Hebrew women, if they were such as [those] about whom we inquire whether they are ever to lie [for them], would neither say anything false, and would most freely refuse the foul ministries concerning the little ones to be slain. But, you will say, they themselves would die. But see what follows: For they would die [destined] for a heavenly habitation of incomparably ampler reward than that house which they made for themselves could be on earth. For they would die, [being] about to be in eternal felicity, having endured death for a most innocent truth.
What of that [woman] in Jericho? Could she [do] this? Would she not, if she did not deceive the seeking citizens by lying, betray the hidden guests by speaking the truth? Could she say to the interrogators: I know where they are, but I fear God, [and] I do not betray them? This indeed she could say, if she were already a true Israelite, in whom there was no guile — which she was about to be, passing over, through the mercy of God, to the City of God. But, this heard, you will say, those [citizens] would slay her [and] search the house. But was it consequent [necessary] that they should find even those whom she had diligently hidden? For the most cautious woman had foreseen [it], and had placed them there where they could lie hidden, even if credence had not been given to her lying. So she too — if nevertheless she had been slain by her own citizens — would, for the work of mercy, have ended this life (to be ended [and] precious in the sight of the Lord) by death, and her benefaction toward them would not have been empty.
But you will say: What if, to that place where she had hidden them, those by whom they were sought had, by searching everything, arrived? In this manner [it] can be said: What if they had been unwilling to believe a most vile and most base woman, not only lying but even perjuring? To be sure, even thus she had obtained [it] — she who lied out of fear. And where do we place the will and power of God? Or was he perhaps not able to guard both her — neither lying to her citizens nor betraying the men of God — and those her [guests] from all destruction? For by whom they were guarded even after the woman’s lie, by him they could, even if she had not lied, assuredly be guarded.
Unless perhaps we have forgotten [that] this was done in Sodom, where the males, inflamed with unspeakable lust against males, could not find even the door of the house in which they were, [nor those] whom they sought: when a just man, in a cause altogether most similar, was unwilling to lie for his guests, whom he knew not to be angels, and feared lest they suffer a violence worse than death. And certainly he could have answered such [things] to [those] seeking as that woman in Jericho answered; for [those men] too, altogether similarly, sought by interrogating. But the just man was unwilling that his own soul be stained by his own lie for the bodies of the guests — [those guests] for whom he willed the bodies of [his] daughters to suffer violence by the iniquity of another’s lust.
Let a man therefore do, even for the temporal safety of men, what he can. But when it has come to this article [point], that he cannot consult for such safety except by sinning, let him now judge himself to have nothing [more] that he may do, when he shall have perceived that to be the [only] remainder which he would not rightly do. Accordingly, Rahab in Jericho — because she received the pilgrim men of God with hospitality, because in receiving them she was imperiled, because in their God she believed, because diligently she hid them where she could, because by another way she gave a most faithful counsel of returning — let her be praised [as one] to be imitated even by the citizens of the supernal Jerusalem. But that she lied — even if something prophetic there is intelligently expounded [of it] — is nevertheless not wisely proposed [as something] to be imitated: although God has memorably honoured those goods [and] has clemently pardoned this evil.”
So he — of truth and of morals the best Censor.
(col. 354)
AND [that] the lie of that [midwives’] and of these was venial, but [that] of Rahab herself was graver, Abulensis strives quite copiously to explain, quaest. 34, 35, 39 — because the infants [were] wholly innocent, [and] nothing had been either attempted or [done] by them or by their parents against the public safety of the Egyptians—