No one can tell what risk Rahab took, or what indignities she suffered in convincing her relatives that they must be in the covenanted place when the city fell. On her part it was a beautiful faith. Perhaps she recounted to them the ten awful plagues that fell on the Egyptians, the deliverance of His people from the house of bondage, the disaster to Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea, the opening of streams in the desert, the nightly dewfall of food, the lofty column of cloud that shaded and led by day, and the pillar of fire that kept them safe from night enemies, human and bestial. All this she told to the assembled household as the ground of her faith, with which she would inspire them. No doubt this woman of Jericho, sick at heart on account of her own past life, and the wickedness of her city, thirsted for a fuller knowledge of the true and holy God whose name she hardly dared to take on her sin-polluted lips, and yet, strange as it may seem, she had the strength and honesty to succeed in the preaching of righteousness to her friends. Day after day she watched the strange procession marching around the closely shut and guarded city. Joshua and the soldiers were at its head; then came the priests with their trumpets, and after them the Ark of the Covenant, hid from view with coverings, and carried reverently on men’s shoulders, while soldiers guarded it from real dangers. Jericho breathed a little more freely when it saw that the strange desert people marched around the city day after day without striking a blow; but Rahab’s faith held steady, and the scarlet cord swung from her window. That cord may have meant to her the blood of the Redeemer cleansing from sin. No doubt, like Moses, she knew the meaning of the “reproach of Christ.” The seventh day she was found early at her window, with a sense of completeness in her obedience and faith. Again the Hebrews filed forth from their camp and marched around the city; but this time they kept on till they had gone around the wall six times. The seventh round, the voice of the old captain at the head of the host rang along the line--“Shout! for Jehovah hath given you the city.” [Illustration: THE FALL OF JERICHO.] Before Rahab fully realized the meaning of this strange command, her ears were filled with the crash of falling walls. In the dust and din, the cries, the shrieks, the terror, but little could be distinctly remembered, only that the desert soldiers who were taking the town were leading her and her kindred forth to a place of safety. The narrator adds, “and she dwelleth in Israel unto this day,” meaning, the family of which she was reckoned the head, continued to dwell among the Lord’s people. May not the three hundred and forty-five “children of Jericho,” mentioned in Ezra ii, 34, and “the men of Jericho” who assisted Nehemiah in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, have been the descendants of her kindred?