I will be mindful of Rahab and Babylon among those that know me. Since the psalmist said, Glorious things are said of you, O city of God, and we understand this city to be the church gathered together from the nations, the psalm now speaks of the calling of the Gentiles: I will be mindful of Rahab and Babylon among those that know me. Let the sinner be at peace; the Lord was mindful of Rahab. I mean, at peace, if the sinner returns to the Lord; otherwise, there is no healing peace in a tearless security. I will be mindful of Rahab, of Rahab, that harlot^[1] who lodged Jesus’ secret agents, who lived in Jericho, where Joshua had come and had dispatched the two spies. Jericho, that collapsed in seven days, is a type of this world, and as such is determined to kill the secret agents. Because, therefore, Jericho is bent on killing the spies, Rahab, the harlot, alone received them, lodged them not on the ground floor but in the upper story of the roof—or, in other words, in the sublimity of her faith. She hid them under her stalks of flax.

Pass now, pray, to the others who were saved by repentance. Perhaps even among the women someone will say, I have committed fornication and adultery. I have defiled my body with every excess. Can there be salvation for me? Fix your eyes, woman, on Rahab, and look for salvation for yourself too. For if she who openly and publicly practiced fornication was saved through repentance, will not she whose fornication preceded the gift of grace be saved by repentance and fasting? For observe how she was saved. She said only this: Since the Lord, your God, is God in heaven above and on earth below.^[1] Your God, she said, for she did not dare call him her God, because of her wantonness. If you want scriptural testimony of her salvation, you have it recorded in the Psalms: I will think of Rahab and Babylon among those who know me. O the great loving-kindness of God, which is mindful even of harlots in Scripture. He did not say merely, I shall think of Rahab and Babylon, but added, among those who know me. The salvation procured by repentance is open to men and women alike.