1 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. ‘Go, look over the land,’ he said, ‘especially Jericho.’ So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.
2 The king of Jericho was told, ‘Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.’
3 So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: ‘Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.’
4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, ‘Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from.
5 At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.’
6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.)