page_title: Shlach
section_title: Summary of the haftarah
hierarchical_section_title: Shlach / Haftarah / Summary of the haftarah
caption_attribution_description: English: Escape from Rahab's House, as in Joshua 2, Woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Deutsch: Holzschnitt aus "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Français&#160;: Gravure en bois pour «Die Bibel in Bildern», 1860.
context_page_description: Shlach, Shelach, Sh'lah, Shlach Lecha, or Sh'lah L'kha is the 37th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fourth in the Book of Numbers. Its name comes from the first distinctive words in the parashah, in Numbers 13:2. Shelach is the sixth and lecha is the seventh word in the parashah. The parashah tells the story of the twelve spies sent to assess the promised land, commandments about offerings, the story of the Sabbath violator, and the commandment of the fringes.
  The parashah constitutes Numbers 13:1–15:41. It is made up of 5,820 Hebrew letters, 1,540 Hebrew words, 119 verses, and 198 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews generally read it in June or early July.
context_section_description: Joshua secretly dispatched two spies from Shittim, instructing them to view the land and Jericho, and they went to the house of a harlot named Rahab. That night, the king of Jericho received word that Israelite men had come to search out the land, and the king sent a demand to Rahab to deliver the men who had come to her house. But Rahab hid the men among stalks of flax on her roof, saying that when it was dark the men had left, and she did not know where they went. The king's men left the city in pursuit of the spies on the road to the Jordan River, and the people of the city shut the city gate after them.
  Rahab promptly went up to the spies on the roof and told them that she knew that God had given the Israelites the land, and that the people lived in terror of the Israelites, having heard how God dried up the Red Sea before them and how the Israelites had destroyed the forces of Sihon and Og. So Rahab asked the spies to swear by God, since she had dealt kindly with them, that they would also deal kindly with her father's house and give her a token to save her family from the coming invasion. The spies told her that if she would not tell of their doings, then when God gave the Israelites the land, they would deal kindly with her. She let them down by a cord through her window, as her house was on the city wall. She told them to hide in the mountain for three days. They told her that when the Israelites came to the land, she was to bind in her window the scarlet rope by which she let the spies down and gather her family into her house for safety, as all who ventured out of the doors of her house would die. She agreed, sent them on their way, and bound the scarlet line in her window.
  The spies hid in the mountain for three days, and the pursuers did not find them. The spies returned to the Israelite camp and told Joshua all that had happened, saying that surely God had delivered the land into their hands and the inhabitants would melt away before them.
caption: Escape from Rahab's House (woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld from the 1860 Bible in Pictures)
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