In Joshua 2 we read about the har­lot of Jerico, Rahab. She secretly receives two Israelite spies into her house and when the sol­diers of the city come to search for them she lies to save their lives.

Now the ques­tion is whether she sinned or not? There are var­i­ous views about it and we had many debates in the past over hypo­thet­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, such as if we were hid­ing Jews from the Nazis. What would we say if they asked us? Should we be hon­est in such sit­u­a­tions or lie. What would we do when fac­ing evil?

Dur­ing WWII the Ger­mans used Jehovah’s Wit­nesses as bar­bers because they knew the JWs would never slit their throats. By not attack­ing evil these JWs allowed evil to con­tinue to com­mit fur­ther crimes.

Judaism teaches that evil must be resisted by the strongest pos­si­ble way. Lying is jus­ti­fied if it is to save the lives of the inno­cent from the wicked. Indeed, when life is in dan­ger just about any law may be abrogated.

There were Karaite (a sect in Judaism that doesn’t accept the oral law) fam­i­lies in Rus­sia who froze to death in the cold Russ­ian win­ter because their fire ceased to burn over the Sab­bath and accord­ing the Law one is not allowed to light the fire. They thought they were faith­ful to God, but were they? In times of famine the eat­ing of unclean ani­mals is per­miss­able. The life of those cre­ated in the image of God is more impor­tant than the laws that were given for their ben­e­fit. If the laws led to their death, what ben­e­fit were the laws for them?

There­fore, Rahab’s lie was excus­able. She sought to save the lives of the ser­vants of the Most High whom she also decided to fol­low. Lying to save them was just, it was a right­eous act.