Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the LORD, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father's house, and give me a true token:
Ver. 12. And give me a true token.] Sυσσημον, as Mark 14:44. Signum consignans, de composito datum. As for the familiar conference that here passed betwixt these spies and Rahab, we need not question how they could so easily understand one another, being of two several nations. For, first, the language of the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Philistines, differed not much from the Hebrew, which Jerome a rightly calleth Omnium linguarum matricem, the mother tongue. See Plautus in "Paenulo," act v. And then, it is not unlikely that these spies had learned the language of Canaan, by conversing with those conquered Amorites on this side Jordan.
a In cap. iii. Sophoniae.