Rahab Hiding the Spies in Jericho (Ms. 33, fol. 114, from the Weltchronik)

Unknown painter, Regensburg · about 1400–1410
Getty Center, Los Angeles

From the Regensburg Weltchronik, about 1400–1410. Two lines of the German verse run above the picture.

Jericho is a grey walled town of towers and red roofs, with faces at its windows. At the door of a house a woman speaks with men carrying spears — probably the king’s men asking for the spies.

From the text

Two spies sent to Jericho stay at Rahab’s house (Joshua 2:1)

The king’s men come for them; she hides them (Joshua 2:3–4)

The artist’s own

Jericho as a walled town of the painter’s own time

Details

Jericho

A town of grey towers and red roofs.

At the windows

Faces look out of the houses.

The woman

In a pink dress she stands at the doorway.

The armed men

Men with spears speak with her.

Unknown illuminator, Regensburg; text by Rudolf von Ems (Austrian, about 1200–1254). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Ms. 33 (88.MP.70), fol. 114) · Tempera colors, gold, silver paint, and ink · Images provided here are believed to be in the public domain and are available under CC0 through Getty’s Open Content Program. (Getty record: "No Copyright", http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

The verses

Josh 2:1–7Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim, saying, “Go, inspect the land, especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. And it was reported to the king of Jericho: “Behold, some men of Israel have come here tonight to spy out the land.” So the king of Jericho sent to Rahab and said, “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, for they have come to spy out the whole land.” But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. So she said, “Yes, the men did come to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk, when the gate was about to close, the men went out, and I do not know which way they went. Pursue them quickly, and you may catch them!” (But Rahab had taken them up to the roof and hidden them among the stalks of flax that she had laid out there.) So the king’s men set out in pursuit of the spies along the road to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as they had gone out, the gate was shut.