There are No Children Named Rahab
There are No Children Named Rahab
Grace Teater
There are no children named Rahab.
No one names their daughter Rahab.
Growing up, I knew an Esther.
She had blonde curly hair and was a soprano in the women’s choir.
There was a Faith, also in the choir.
I had a kindergarten teacher named Miss Ruth.
Throughout all my years of childhood birthday parties, elementary school tests, and mindless
scanning as a grocery store cashier – I knew not one Rahab.
Because no one names their daughter Rahab.
I remember being reminded of my own name rather unexpectedly last fall.
I was working as a restaurant hostess late one night.
My fingers twirled the coiled telephone cord as I triple-checked takeout orders and forced banter
with customers growing impatient with wait times.
A woman walked in.
She was dressed in black and wore hiking boots left torn from years of steady use. I remember
the thick smell of cigarettes wafting from her hair as she took it out of its messy ponytail. Her
lips were cracked from the December cold, but her smile was genuine and warm.
We began to talk, and she explained to me that she was delivering food to her daughter who was
on crutches after a sports injury.
“You’re a good mom,” I said.
She offered a small smile and asked me what my name was.
Grace.
She paused for a moment to let the smile spread fully across her cheeks before it stopped at the
wrinkled corners of her eyes.
“Your mom loves Jesus, doesn’t she?”
I remember being struck by the pointedness of her question.
“Yes, she does.”
She pulled out a cheap cross necklace that was hidden under her shirt and toyed with it before
saying, “I love Jesus with all my heart.”
I handed her the takeout orders, and she left.
I clocked out, drove quietly home, and never thought about the interaction again.
It was just a regular Friday night shift.
The memory did not hit me again until this past summer.
There, it met me rather fiercely:
“Your mom loves Jesus, doesn’t she?”
She posed it as a question that had only one possible answer.
As if the two could not possibly be separated from each other.
My mother loves Jesus, therefore she named me Grace.
Because my mother loves Jesus, she named me —her only daughter — Grace.
But there are no children named Rahab.
No one names their daughter Rahab.
Rahab.
A woman of ill profession.
No, say it.
She was a prostitute.
A woman who commodified her body.
Better still, a woman who despite the weight of her sins looked toward God and said, “Here is
my mustard seed of faith,” and chose to protect the Israelite men.
A Canaanite woman aiding what to her would have been enemy spies.
A harlot hiding those sent from Joshua, Moses’s successor.
Yet there are no children named Rahab.
No one names their daughter Rahab.
Her name is absent from the lips of mothers as they call for their children.
Her significance abandoned by the speakers from the pulpit.
Her occupation admonished by the members of the pew.
Rahab.
A woman mentioned by name in the Gospel of Matthew.
Not Rahab the prostitute, but Rahab the mother of Boaz.
Boaz who married Ruth.
Ruth the mother of Obed.
Obed the father of Jesse.
Jesse the father of King David.
Oh, how good God is.
I propose this: every moment we are not on our knees in awe of Him, we do not understand.
Him, the master storyteller.
Is this not He who took the blemished and broken thread of His people and spun it into gold?
He who looked at the mangled corpse of creation and spoke upon it redemption?
Him, the divine author.
For what man could pen such brilliance?
King David the father of Solomon.
Solomon, whose descendant was Joseph.
Joseph, the father of Jesus.
Oh, how beautiful God is.
And there is Rahab amongst it all.
A member of the lineage of Christ.
The same Christ whose whisper rebuked the winds and whose skin healed the sick.
Is this not Jesus, the Son of God?
He who carried Death upon a splintered cross, yet awoke triumphant on the third day?
That splintered cross, a Roman torture device.
The same cross symbolized in the cheap necklace the woman held when she asked me my name.
Grace.
My mother loves Jesus, so she named me Grace.
Rahab was flawed.
As am I, horrifically so.
I have committed my own sins, and yet cast stones upon others in moments I should have shown
grace.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Yes, she was flawed.
But oh, she was faithful.
I finish with this:
The fall of Eve, the hesitancy of Moses, the refusal of Jonah, the sins of King David, the crimes
of the Apostle Paul — and yet children still bear their names.
There are no children named Rahab.
No one names their daughter Rahab.
Rahab.
Where some may find a scarlet letter, let there be weeping of victory.
Oh, how good God is.
Oh, how beautiful God is.
Grace I. Teater
Writer & Journalist
Grace is a freelance writer and journalist. When she is not searching for a new story, she can be found at a used bookstore. This is her first poetry publication.
Photography by Sabina Sturzu