It was night; the gate was shut; by the King, within and without, the good spies were being sought. What were they to do? Should they await the morrow, until the gate be opened — [when] all eyes [were] most intent upon them? They would be taken at once, and led to the wroth King. Should they remain hidden in Rahab’s house? But [there] was danger lest another interrogation about them be set on foot, and [what] had lately been omitted—
(col. 367)
—[lest another] search of the whole house [be made]. Nor indeed — even if, without any peril, they could tarry there longer, until the arrival of the Israelites — was [that] to their advantage. For their duty required not that they lie hidden, nor that they return in any manner whatever to him by whom they had been sent, but that they report the scouted [intelligence] to Joshua himself as quickly as possible. Behold, then, the admirable manner of their deliverance, v. 15: “So she (Rahab) let them down by a cord [funis] through the window.”
This cord is named in the Hebrew in three ways. First, by a single name, which [at] the verse now cited is חֶבֶל [chebel], and signifies not any cord [whatever], but a strong one, [one] composed of several [strands]. For this name always imports a conjunction and a certain association, as could easily be shown by examples — so much so that by it is signified even some congregation and band of men, as [in] 1 Sam. [Reg.] 10 v. 5, where [there is] a “wedge [company] of prophets,” and, according to certain Rabbins, Psalm 118 [119] v. 61 — for thus they interpret [it]: “the band of the impious plundered me,” where, from the 70, our [Interpreter has] “the cords of sinners encompassed me”; and by such cords Jeremiah too was let down into the pit, Jerem. ch. 38 v. 6 & 12.
Secondly, it is named by two names, v. 21 [18] — namely, “a scarlet cord [funiculus coccineus]” — of which [names] the [former] does not diminish “cord [funis],” which the Interpreter used before, but signifies entirely the same [thing]; [it is] set down, however, because [there is here] in the Hebrew a name other than before: תִּקְוָה [tiqvah], of which [there is] a twofold notion in the scriptures. One, and the most frequent, when it signifies expectation and hope: Job 4 v. 6, ch. 7 v. 6, ch. 8 v. 13, ch. 14 v. 7 & 15, ch. 17 v. 15, ch. 27 v. 8; Psalm 9 v. 19; Proverbs 11 v. 7, ch. 23 v. 18, and elsewhere. The other [notion] here, when it denotes a cord — as it were something woven, and composed of several strands gathered together. For in the verb קָוָה [qavah] there is also a force of weaving-together and gathering, and thence [comes] a strong and robust cord, as R. Isaiah admonishes. Radak gives the same name, from the Chaldee, the signification of “fringe [fimbria].” But both [that] — and the reason for which he would have a fringe here employed — is invented, [namely] because, forsooth, the spies had perhaps spied in Rahab’s house a fringe [made] of scarlet threads. For, as I was saying in the preceding question, it was entirely the same cord by which both these were let down and which was afterward hung out by Rahab.
Now coccum or coccus — from which coccineus [scarlet] — is either a shrub, whose grain, both of itself, is fit for a red dye and, if joined to a purple colour, sharpens [intensifies] it markedly and, as it were, kindles it (as Pliny shows, bk. 21 ch. 8); or [it] is a little worm [vermiculus], which is born from the grain of the said shrub, in the shape of a pea or lentil, and clings to its leaves (as Isidore teaches), and produces a signal redness, either of itself, or added to purple; and this worm the Arabs call carmen [qirmiz] or chermes, or — as Chalcondylas says [in] bk. 3 of the Turkish History — κρήμνον [krēmnon]. But whether this red colour be from the grain or from the worm, it is taken in two ways. For either something is dyed with it once, or twice, or oftener — when, namely, either the wool alone is steeped in the one or the other [dye], or both the wool and the thread which is afterward made from it; and these latter the ancients called δίβαφα [dibapha, “twice-dipped”], as it were twice-dyed — about which [see] Cicero to Caelius, and Pliny bk. 9 ch. 36; Seneca [in] the Hercules Oetaeus, when he says:
“Nor does the soft wool, re-dipped in the Sidonian cauldron, drink the strength [of the dye]”
and the Lyric [poet, Horace]: “…fleeces of wool re-dyed with Tyrian purple-shells [murex].”
(col. 368)
Hence indeed it comes about that these [terms] are sometimes distinguished — as [in] Isa. 1 v. 18: “If your sins be as scarlet [coccinum], they shall be whitened as snow; and if they be red as the little worm [vermiculus], they shall be as wool” — [and] sometimes are taken interchangeably for the same [thing], as, in the same place, the 70: what is coccinum they call φοινίκεον [phoinikeon, “purple-red”], and what is vermiculus they render κόκκινον [kokkinon, “scarlet”]. And [at] Exod. 25 v. 4, in the Hebrew, “the worm of the coccus,” for which is rendered by our [Interpreter] “twice-dyed scarlet”; likewise ch. 25 v. 1, ch. 39 v. 29, ch. 36 v. 8, ch. 28 v. 5. Nay, these are not rarely confounded with red-purple, or the murex-colour (as Brodaeus explains, bk. 1 Miscel. ch. 8), and likewise with the [Tyrian] purple [ostrum] (of which Gellius bk. 2 ch. 26), and with every red which is more beautiful and brilliant, or more darkening. Whence by Tertullian, bk. 4 Against Marcion, [it is called] “rosy [roseus]”; by St. Gregory [and] St. Chrysostom (hom. to the baptized) and St. Epiphanius, “bloody [sanguineus].” And coccus is called, in Hebrew, שָׁנִי [shani] — either from שָׁנַן [shanan], which is “to sharpen” (because, as I said, it sharpens the purple colour), or, as pleases Radak, from שָׁנָה [shanah], which is “to repeat,” because the same colour, as I also said, is applied repeatedly [i.e. dyed twice].
Our Interpreter, moreover, seems deliberately [to have] rather more willingly rendered [it] coccinum than coccus, so as to signify that which is from the coccus — whether it be the colour itself, or the worm, or that which is dyed and imbued with that colour or with the worm’s juice. Where, precisely, that kind of grains and worms is born, and other [things] of that kind, Arias Montanus teaches [on] Isaiah 1; our [own] Del Río, in [his] Commentary on the Medea, fol. 23, 24; and I [myself], when I was speaking of the material of the Tabernacle. And from this at last it is clear — both [from] other passages of the scriptures and [from] this our [passage] — in what manner the spies’ cord was scarlet [funis coccineus].
Thirdly, the same cord is named by three names, v. 18 — namely, “a sign [signum], a scarlet cord [funiculus coccineus].” But in all the texts there is here something of difficulty, and first in the Hebrew. For there is repeated the second, now-expounded appellation of this cord, but so that a new name is interposed — תִּקְוַת [tiqvath, construct] — and indeed governed by the former. Now [this] is elsewhere always rendered “thread [filum]”: Gen. 14 v. 23, Judg. 16 v. 12, 1 Kings [Reg.] 7 v. 15, Eccles. 4 v. 11 [12], Cant. 4 v. 3. Why, then, was this interposition made? Radak responds [that] they are two synonyms, thus: “you shall bind the thread of a scarlet thread” — just as [in] Daniel 12 v. 2, “in the earth of earth [i.e. the dust of the earth]”; and then the rule could be applied which, from the same Rabbin, Genebrardus notes concerning the title of Psalm 107 [and] Pagninus [notes] in the Thesaurus, at the word פָּתָה [pathah]: [that] when among the Hebrews two substantive names of the same signification are joined, some pre-eminence in that class of things is signified — as “the mire of the earth [limus terrae],” that is, the muddiest mire; “the mud of filth [lutum coeni],” that is, the greatest or filthiest mud. “Thread of thread,” therefore, or rather “cord of thread,” will be a cord well and thoroughly woven and knit from threads, and therefore exceedingly firm, and [one] which could not easily be broken or dissolved.
In the Greek, moreover, is added σημεῖον [sēmeion, “sign”], for explanation’s sake, because this cord was given for the sign requested by Rahab — especially since before, [at] v. 14, that (as I indicated [in] the preceding question) had been passed over in the same Greek text. The Latin, however, even though in that place it did not pass it over, nonetheless, for the sake of the same explanation and in imitation of the Greek 70, repeated this same [thing] here at v. 18 — unless someone should think [that] there is alluded, by a certain pleasant [wordplay], another signification of the Hebrew name תִּקְוָה [tiqvah]: that this cord was a sign of the hope which Rahab ought to have concerning the deliverance of herself and her own, and from which safety was to be expected. But in the Greek, besides, the same cord is called σπαρτίον [spartion, “small cord”]. Whether it [was made] of Spanish broom [spartum], or—
(col. 369)
—[whether it was] truly [made] of Spanish broom [spartum] or genista. For of these were cords once made, as [is clear] from Pliny bk. 24 ch. 9, [and] Cato On Agriculture; and from Xenophon, in the Cynegeticus, it is plain; and even today [such] are made. But I rather think [it] woven of linen and silken thread — 1. because the Hebrew text indicates that clearly enough; [2.] then [because] so precious a scarlet colour would scarcely seem to be applied to cords otherwise so cheap; 3. because it is usual that every cord, of whatever material it be, is called σπάρτον [sparton] or σπαρτίον [spartion] — just as also χοινίον [σχοινίον, schoinion, “rush-rope”], although this properly is a cord plaited of rush [iuncus]. For “the Greeks,” says Pliny bk. 19 ch. 2, “used rush for cords” — [if we may trust the name] by which they call that plant (for σχοῖνος [schoinos] is a rush) — “afterward palm-leaves and lime-bark.” And so, in the place cited before, Jeremiah was let down into the pit by rush-ropes [schoeni]; and Cratinus says [that] the rush-cord, in the fable of Ocnus plaiting σχοινία [schoinia, “rush-ropes”], gnawed up by an ass, Pliny bk. 35 ch. 11 called spartum: “The sluggard,” he says, “who is called Ocnus, twisting broom-cord [spartum], which the little ass gnaws”; Propertius [called it] simply “cord [funem]”:
“Worthier than crooked Ocnus, who twists a cord.”
For in this word [funis] there befalls [what] Seneca teaches happens in many others too, bk. 5 On Benefits ch. 13: “Certain [things],” he says, “even if they are not true [to the name], on account of a likeness, are comprehended under the same word.” So we say “a silver and a golden pyx [box],” although the very word cries out [that] it is properly made of boxwood [buxus]. And likewise ch. 14: “He is said to have a debt [aes alienum, lit. ‘another’s bronze’], both who owes gold pieces, and who [owes] leather stamped with a public form” — such as [there] was among the Lacedaemonians, “which serves the use of counted money.”
Finally, because Rahab seems to have had a supply of flax for this [purpose] — to work up that kind of threads and cords, as above, quest. 5 & 9 — from this, too, another [question] can be settled: why Rahab wished to use such a witness [sign]? For I say (the allegory, about which afterward, being now omitted) [that] this was done because that [cord] was at her hand, and she was making it. In Lyranus the Hebrews say [that] by this little cord she was wont to admit and let out [her] lovers. But [that] would have been done at a window which looked rather into the city. I remember hearing someone say [that] this was a token of the houses of harlots. But how he proved [it], I scarcely know. To our Martín de Roa (bk. 1 ch. 3) it seems to have been a token of terror [distress]. But why, before the taking of Jericho, she should have had threads of that kind, and used them, I do not see. And indeed [that] even slender cords of this sort are exceedingly strong is understood from this too — since there were certain linen threads, each of which consisted of 365 fibres, according to Pliny bk. 19 ch. 1; and within our memory I have heard [that] a distinguished man, a prince, let himself down from a certain custody [prison] by a very fine silk cord.
It remains that we understand whether Josephus is in concord with scripture. For in the latter, Rahab lets down the spies; in the former, they [let down] their very selves. But no doubt she showed the plan of the letting-down, pointed out the window, held forth the cord, tied [it], and held [it]; [while] they, gripping this with [their] hands, descended from the wall and departed: and thus something was done in the letting-down both by them and by her. But whether there were also, before the door of the house, certain red signs — as the same [Josephus] asserts — will be said [in] chapter six.