Question XLIX. Rahab being preserved, did any of the Israelites take her to wife — and who?

Rahab had no husband, because, as was said in ch. 2, she was a harlot. But when she betook herself to the true worship of God — by the great benefit of that same God — she cast off that nefarious habit of life, and gave herself wholly to chastity and modesty, which she cultivated her whole subsequent life — not, indeed, by abstaining altogether from marriage, but by entering upon a chaste and immaculate wedlock. For the state of that time, and love and honor of offspring, and the divine law, and sacred religion, required chaste and holy [marriages]. Now certain Talmudic Rabbis say that she was made wife to Joshua himself — in Tractate Zevachim, ch. 14; Megillah, ch. 1; and thence R. Gedaliah in Shalsheleth [ha-Kabbalah], fol. 14; and R. Moses [Maimonides], in the negative precept 112, fol. 39b, col. 2. But there is no argument in them, as was set forth above, q. 45. And indeed, since no children of Joshua, no posterity, are ever read of in the sacred letters, it would be false even by their own exposition of the word — about which the same becheiah [i.e. הֶחֱיָה, hecheyah, hiphil of חָיָה “to make live”]. For since they say this means “to make a wife fruitful, and to make her, in a way, live in her offspring,” Rahab would not have “made [them] live” [i.e. married Joshua], who left neither son nor daughter from her. But it is most certain that she married the son of Nahshon, who is called Salmon and Salma in the Hebrew, in the last chapter of Ruth (vv. 20 and 21). For so the Evangelist Matthew testifies (ch. 1, v. 5): Nahshon begot Salmon; but Salmon begot Booz of Rahab. And Nahshon was prince of the tribe of Judah (Num. 1:4 and 7). Theophylact, indeed, and the author of the Opus Imperfectum, doubted, at that place of St. Matthew, whether that Rahab was the same as this our [Rahab]. But there is no cause — not even the least — for doubting. For since the legitimate and ordinary wives of the Jews are passed over in silence in that whole genealogy of CHRIST the Lord, and only the foreign ones, or those [marked] with some notable stain, are named — Thamar, Ruth, Bathsheba — what other, besides this our [Rahab], is set down by name, [as] Rahab [is]? And in this [matter] there is the highest agreement of all Christians, even of the heretics: so that it is a wonder that, against the consensus of all the Latin, Greek, and Syrian books, Santes Pagninus removed from that text of Matthew this “of Rahab” — as our [Salmerón] notes (tract. 26, on ch. 1 of Matthew).