Compare & Correlate · Interpretive
Rahab's scarlet cord
The scarlet cord in Rahab's window beside the blood on the doorposts in Egypt. The pairing is 1 Clement's, not scripture's: no verse makes it. The two chapters do share a sign asked for and given, a household kept inside, and a warning against going out of the door — and those words are checked. The colour is the tradition's.
Interpretive: No verse makes this link. It is a reading, and it is named.
Rahab's scarlet cord. Interpretive — no verse makes this connection. It is a reading, named and labelled below.
- תִּקְוָה tiqvah, “cord” — 2 verses in the annotated Hebrew corpus holding it together with shani, scarlet: Joshua 2:18, Joshua 2:21
The words, as the corpus holds them (each checked present, or absent, in the verses cited beside it):
- דָּם dam, “blood”
- מְזוּזָה mezuzah, “doorpost”
- שָׁנִי shani, “scarlet”
- תִּקְוָה tiqvah, “cord; elsewhere, hope”
- חַלּוֹן chalon, “window”
- אוֹת ot, “sign”
- יָצָא yatsa, “go out”
- פֶּתַח petach, “doorway”
- בַּיִת bayit, “house”
- דֶּלֶת delet, “door”
- חָיָה chayah, “keep alive”
Whose reading: 1 Clement 12:7, and Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 111: the scarlet as the blood of the Lord · confidence: tentative. No verse makes this connection.
Sources:
- Hebrew words, absences and the count of cord with scarlet checked against the annotated corpus by tests/test_correlations.py.
Row by row
| Exodus 12 | Joshua 2 and 6 | |
|---|---|---|
| The mark on the house | blood on the two doorposts and the lintelExodus 12:7 | this cord of scarlet thread tied in the windowJoshua 2:18 |
| Blood and no scarlet in one; scarlet and no blood in the other. The colour is where the tradition joins them. | ||
| A sign | the blood shall be a sign for youExodus 12:13 | give me a true signJoshua 2:12 |
| Do not go out | none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morningExodus 12:22 | whoever goes out of the doors of your house, his blood is on his own headJoshua 2:19 |
| Joshua's blood here is the blood of guilt, not of a sign: the same word, a different use. | ||
| The household | the LORD will pass over the door and not let the destroyer into your housesExodus 12:23 | Rahab, her father's house and all she had, Joshua kept aliveJoshua 6:25 |
| The cord | no cordExodus 12:7 | tiqvah, the cord — the corpus's word for hope elsewhereJoshua 2:21 |
| Tiqvah is glossed hope in thirty-two other places. The pun is readers'; Joshua does not make it. | ||
Where it appears in the text
- Exodus 12 — the blood on the doorposts, a sign on the house
- Joshua 2 — the scarlet cord in Rahab's window
- Joshua 6 — Rahab and her father's house kept alive
In the app this comparison opens beneath each of those chapters. Open it in TheophilusBible.