Rachav (Rahab)

רחב

This page needs to be read in partnership with the pages on Tohu/Tehom/Tahamat, Liv-Yatan (Leviathan), Bohu (et al), Nachash/Nechushtan and Taninim, as these are all aspects or variants of the same paradigm.

Rachav (רָחָב) or Rahab, the famous "harlot" of Yericho (Jericho) who helped the spies in Joshua 2:1 and 6:17. Her "harlotry" was really her role as priestess of the serpent cult known as Tahamat in Sumer, and just as El-Elohim uses the multiple plural, so in this earlier matriarchal way do Tehom-Tahamat and Rachav-Rechovot.

Why Rahab in English, rather than Rachav? As with the tsade-zayin (ז-צ) error (Uts becomes Uz in the Book of Job, Parets becomes Perez in Genesis 38:29), so English translations regularly fail to distinguish a Hey (ה) from a Chet (ח), leaving, for example, Haran (הרן) and Charan (חרן) apparently identical in Genesis 11:31.

However, there is also the oddity, or anomaly, or possibly the error, that Psalm 87:4 gives RAHAV, with a Hey not a Chet:

אַזְכִּיר רַהַב וּבָבֶל לְיֹדְעָי הִנֵּה פְלֶשֶׁת וְצוֹר עִם כּוּשׁ זֶה יֻלַּד שָׁם

AZKIR RAHAV U VAV-EL LE YOD'AI HINEH PHELESHET VE TSOR IM KUSH ZEH YULAD SHAM

I will remember Rahab and Bav-El (Babylon) as among them that know me: Behold, Philistia, and Tsur, with Kush: This one was born there.

And no question that it was a Hey in the original - or as original as we can get, the Paleo-Hebraic text from before the Ezraic epoch - see below:

Nor is this the only known occurrence of Rahav with a Hey.

In Psalm 89:11 (10 in most Christian versions):

אַתָּה דִכִּאתָ כֶחָלָל רָהַב בִּזְרוֹעַ עֻזְּךָ פִּזַּרְתָּ אוֹיְבֶיךָ

ATAH DIKIYTA CHE CHALAL RAHAV BIZRO’A UZCHA PIZARTA OYEVEYCHA

You crushed Rahab, as one who is slain; you scattered your enemies with the arm of your strength.

And in Isaiah 51:9:

עוּרִי עוּרִי לִבְשִׁי עֹז זְרוֹעַ יְהוָה עוּרִי כִּימֵי קֶדֶם דֹּרוֹת עוֹלָמִים הֲלוֹא אַתְּ הִיא הַמַּחְצֶבֶת רַהַב מְחוֹלֶלֶת תַּנִּין

URI URI LIVSHI OZ ZERU'A YHVH URI KI YEMEY KEDEM DOROT OLAMIM HA LO ET HI HA MACHTSEVET RAHAV MECHOLELET TANIN 

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of YHVH; awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Was it not you who hewed Rahab in pieces, who slew the dragon?

this latter unequivocal in identifying Rahab as the sea-monster.

Assuming RACHAV with a Chet to be nonetheless correct, the root word means "wide" or "spacious", and Job 30:14 uses it as an epithet for the sea, as Exodus 3:8 does of the Earth. It also yields the word Rechov (רחוב) = "street", "open place" or "forum", the latter in the sense of an oriental town-square, where markets and trials were held. It also gives Rechovot (רחובות), where Yitschak (Isaac) dug a well in Genesis 26:22, and various other names:

Rechovot Ir (רחובות עיר): one of the cities of Mesopotamia founded by Nimrod, according to Genesis 10:11, on the banks of the Tigris.

Rechovot ha-Nahar (רחובות הנהר), the birthplace or king-city of the first, Edomite king Sha'ul (not the Sha'ul who was the first king of the Beney Yisra-El). Nahar means "river", and the river in question is presumed to be the Perat (Euphrates).

Rechav-Yah (רחביה): the only son of Eli-Ezer, Mosheh's second child, according to 1 Chronicles 23:17. 1 Chronicles 24:21 names his first son as Yishi-Yah (ישיה), which is a rather interestingly coincidental variant of both Yesha-Yah (Isaiah), and Jesus - one that Christian commentators appear to have overlooked. 1 Chronicles 26:25 disputes the other references however, stating that he had very many other sons: "Rechav-Yah his son, and Yishi-Yah his son, and Yoram his son, and Zichri his son, and Shelomit his son...", all of which is entirely untrustworthy, as the text also places these grandchildren of Mosheh at the time of King David.

Rechav-Am (רחבעם): King Rehoboam, son and heir of Shelomoh (Solomon), who ruled the kingdom of Yehudah between 975 and 958 BCE (1 Kings 11:43 ff).

And all these people and places, highly significant in their own ways every one, come to mean "wide"! A wide well? A king named "my people are very broad"? Mosheh's grandson given the sobriquet "for whom the gods makes an ample space"? So they are rendered, in the mainstream lexicons and dictionaries! Ah, but what an easy alteration it was for the Redactor to make, to disguise the queendom of the great goddess!

And now look again at my second paragraph, above: "so English translations regularly fail to distinguish a Hey (ה) from a Chet (ח), leaving Haran (הרן) and Charan (חרן) apparently identical in Genesis 11:31." No - it was a Hey!

Because there is, of course, another Rahab (רהב), the one we witnessed in Isaiah 51:9, the Prince of the Sea. He (?) unsuccessfully defied YHVH, much as Lucifer did God in the Christian myth, and Poseidon Zeus in the Greek - and was destroyed for doing so, according to Job 26:12. According to Isaiah 51:9, which specifically equates Rahab with the mythological dragon or serpent of the world-egg, YHVH killed Rahab with a sword, slicing it in two we can guess, as both Marduk and Yam did in the Baveli (Babylonian) and Kena'ani (Canaanite) versions. We are clearly in the realms of Tiamat/Tahamat/Tehom, the Babylonian creation myth, with Rahab serving as a Yehudit synonym.

The sea-monster was the symbol of the fertilising mother-goddess of the universe: Aphrodite to the Greeks, born on the foam of the waves. Yitschak's well would certainly have been dedicated to a water-goddess - Mir-Yam (Miriam) probably, Mosheh's "sister", as all the evidence in the Book of Exodus makes clear. Mir-Yam (מרים) is really Mar-Yam (מר-ים), "the salt-sea", one of the sources from which the Christians took the name Mary, likewise the great Mother-Goddess, and linked to Mount Mor-Yah (מוריה) - "the tears of Yah", where Av-Raham took Yitschak for sacrifice, and where the Temple was later built. In the Yisra-Eli version of the Egyptian trimurti, Osher (Osiris) is Mosheh, Hor (Horus) is Aharon, and Eshet (Isis) is Mir-Yam.

To provide fuller evidence of this, we need to identify a shrine of moon-worshippers, whose priestesses practiced the ritual prostitution of the sacred hierodules. And lo and behold, right there in Yericho (ירחו - from Yareyach - ירח - the moon) we have the story of the other Rahab (רחב) - Rachav with a Chet (ח) - in Joshua 2:1 and 6:17. After which we need to look again at the story of Lot, at the time of the destruction of the Five Cities, and ask what was going on with the offer of his daughter as a harlot in that tale - see my commentaries on Genesis 19. Note that Rahab plays a small and disguised role in that tale, starting as early as verse 2.

Joshua, the conqueror of Yericho, is fully Yehoshu'a bin Nun - an odd name, since Nun (נון) coincidentally (!) means "fish": the obvious symbol for a sea-dragon. Like Mosheh before him, Yehoshu'a sends out spies, from Shitim, where he is based - apparently a town, but Shitim (שטים) are acacia trees, and very holy, being the wood from which the Ark of the Covenant was made, and sacred to the moon-goddess (Exodus 25:10 among many other references).

From sacred grove then to city-shrine, they entered the house of a "harlot", Rahab - what, a case of dereliction of duty, sent to do some spying and seeking women instead? Tut-tut. But look at verse 18, where Rahab helps them escape by letting them out of her upstairs window, and not just on any old piece of rope, but on that very scarlet thread that we have encountered before - on Zerach's ankle, for example, in Genesis 38, and with Yisaschar's son Tol'a in Genesis 46:13): the royal, sacred cord. Rahab is no mere kerb-crawler's hitch-hiker, but the moon and sea-goddess' high priestess, whom Yesha-Yah (Isaiah) later sought to anathematise when her worship was overthrown in favour of the patriarchal and monotheistic YHVH.

What does this tell us about the two river cities, Rechovot Ir and Rechovot Nahar, except that they were named after Rahab/Rachav, because they stood at the waterside: her domain? Possibly the option that the Hey and Chet are both correct, but like "plow" and "plough" and "ye" and "thou", dialect variations, or changes over the passage of time.

And as to Rechav-Yah and Rechav-Am, the son of Mosheh and the grandson of Shelomoh - to whom were they dedicated, if not the mother-goddess? Indeed, Rechav-Yah is much more easily translated, and explained, now that we have made this link: Rechav Yah: "Rahab is Yah" - a merging of two versions of the same cult, when Yah became the predominant goddess of the Yisra-Eli cult at the time of King David. 

See also Job 9:8-13, when he stood on the waters the "helpers of Rahab" stooped beneath him; Tiamat's allies in her struggles against Marduk.

Gesenius argues that Rahab was a poetical name for Egypt, and probably of Egyptian origin; but there is no evidence to substantiate this.

For a fuller account of the "sea-monster" Rahab or Rachav, see the middle section of my page on Tehom, Tohu, Tahamat, Tiamat, where I have left it, because it makes more sense when combined with their tales.

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