The disciples once let down St. Paul from the wall of Damascus in a basket, Acts 9 v. 25 — thus, namely, that they climbed the city wall at the same time, and put him into that basket, and so let [him] depart. But—
(col. 370)
—but Rahab, in order to let down the spies, had no need at all to climb the ramparts of Jericho, but had, from her own house, the fullest means of doing this very [thing]. “For her house clung to the wall,” v. 15 — or, as [it] is in the Hebrew, “because her house was in the wall of the wall, and she herself dwelt in the wall.” For her house was so constructed that its wall [side] was one and the same with the city wall, and thus [the city wall] was her [own house’s] wall. Today, as the most illustrious Duke of Olyka writes (letter 2, fol. 105), “only a single tower, half of it, whole, four-cornered, survives at the edge of the city” — which some will [to be] the house of Rahab the harlot, others of Zacchaeus. Wherefore they think [that], for the memory of one or the other [of them], the greater part of it has been divinely reserved — since, in that whole site of the city, scarcely a whole [stretch of] wall of one cubit’s height can be found. See ch. 6 quaest. 16, to which these [matters] might perhaps better be referred.
But why did she dwell in the wall itself? Masius fol. 49, Calvin, and others respond [that] citizens of slenderer fortune — and especially harlots — were wont either to build little houses into the ramparts of the city, or to inhabit the arches [fornices, brothels]. But in many cities [one] may see the houses of honourable, rich, and ample men so built that the same [structure] is both their wall and the city wall. And therefore it is to be attributed to chance, or rather to divine providence, which so long beforehand prepared this way of escape for the Israelite messengers. But how — the ramparts of the city falling — Rahab’s house, [namely] that [same] wall, and thus the whole house, did not collapse at the same time, let [it] be deferred to ch. 6. Let this now be considered: how great was the folly and stupor of the Jerichoites, who, with the enemy so near, had no greater regard and care for [their] walls — [namely] that they should see to it either that windows of that kind be shut, or [be] more diligently watched — especially by night, when even natives and citizens are wont to desert to the enemy.