The Scarlet Cord is the story of Rahab from the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. In Joshua there are five paragraphs dedicated to Rahab's story, Wolf takes those paragraphs and expounds on them creating a novel.
In Wolf's book Rahab is kidnapped as a child and saved by a boy. When she meets this boy later on in Jerhico she falls in love with him. However they cannot marry because he is an Isrealite and she is a Cannanite. However their love continually pulls them together.
Rahab is a very beautiful young girl, and is required to be the heirodule for the king. This means that she is required to sleep with the king in a religious ritual so that the crops will grow. During this encounter Rahab begins to pray to Elohim (the God of the Isrealites). She is saved from being the heirodule and begins to serve Elohim by harboring Isrealite spys without her families knowledge, once the spys are safe they promise to save her whole family during the destruction of Jerhico. Because of Rahab's allegience to Elohim her whole family is saved and her love with Sala can continue.
I found the book to be moderately entertaining. I did enjoy the story itself, however some of the details were annoying to me. We tend to take our worldview, and our culture and place it on the world thousands of years ago. For example: Rahab's mother is sitting on the floor folding clothes with the children. In reality there would not have been any clothes to fold, they would not have had extra. Also things like disrespect for parents would not have been tolerated, and "love" was not the most valuable thing.
Overall the story was well written, I just took issue with a few minor details.
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