This haftarah opens with Joshua secretly sending two men to scout the city of Jericho, who lodge at the house of a woman named Rahab. When the king of Jericho learns of their presence and demands they be handed over, Rahab hides the two men beneath stalks of flax drying on her roof and tells the king's messengers that the men had already left the city, sending the pursuers off in the wrong direction.
Rahab then tells the spies directly that she knows God has given them the land, that the terror of Israel has fallen on all of Jericho's inhabitants because of what they have heard about the crossing of the Red Sea and the defeat of neighboring kings, and she asks them to swear that her own family will be spared when the city eventually falls, in exchange for the help she has just given them.
The haftarah closes with the spies agreeing to her terms, instructing her to tie a scarlet cord in her window as a sign and to gather her family inside her house when the attack comes, before she lowers them down the outer city wall by a rope, and the two men return safely to Joshua reporting that the whole land is melting in fear before Israel.
Rahab's request that her own family specifically be spared, rather than any broader plea for the city as a whole, gives the episode a personal stake beneath its larger military significance, a single household's survival negotiated in the middle of preparations for a citywide conquest.