Rahab

## Rahab

Rahab is the name of a Canaanite woman in the book of Joshua and also of a defeated power in the poetry of Job, Psalms and Isaiah. Some readers link the second Rahab to a planet that exploded between Mars and Jupiter, but the Bible never says so and astronomy does not support it.

Rahab: In the Bible, the name of two different figures. The first is a Canaanite woman of Jericho who hid two Israelite spies (Joshua 2; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25). The second is a Hebrew word meaning “proud one” or “boaster,” used by poets for a power that God broke, usually read as a sea monster or as Egypt (Psalm 87:4; Psalm 89:10; Isaiah 51:9).

Exploded planet hypothesis: The proposal that the asteroid belt is the remains of a planet that broke apart. It dates to 1802 and is not accepted by mainstream astronomy. Some Bible readers have connected it to Rahab, but that connection is a modern reading and does not appear in the text.

## What Is Rahab?

Rahab is a Hebrew name used for two figures in Scripture. One is the woman of Jericho. The other is a poetic figure of pride and defeat, set beside the dragon and the serpent in verses about God’s power in ancient days. Whether that second Rahab was a sea monster, Egypt, a rebel spiritual power or something else is a matter of interpretation.

## Rahab in Job, Psalms and Isaiah

The King James Bible prints the name Rahab in Psalm 87:4, Psalm 89:10 and Isaiah 51:9. A marginal note ties it to Job 26:12, where the text reads “the proud.” Psalm 89:10 says, “Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain.” Isaiah 51:9 asks, “Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?” Job 26:13 adds that God’s hand “formed the crooked serpent.”

The Hebrew verbs are strong. Chatsab (cut) means to hew or quarry, the work done to stone and wood. Chalal (wounded) means to pierce or bore. Chuwl (formed) means to twist or whirl. Bariach, the “piercing” serpent of Isaiah 27:1, means a fleeing one. Readers who favor the planet idea point to these words as fitting a solid body that was split and sent spinning. Other readers note that Hebrew poetry uses such verbs freely for a sea creature.

## The Exploded Planet Hypothesis

In 1801 Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres in a gap where the spacing of the planets seemed to call for one. In 1802 Heinrich Olbers found Pallas nearby and proposed that both were fragments of a planet that had broken apart. The idea later took the name Phaethon from the Greek myth of Helios’s son, who lost control of the sun’s chariot and was struck down by Zeus. In the twentieth century the astronomer Tom Van Flandern, who worked at the U.S. Naval Observatory and later founded Meta Research, defended a version of it. Most astronomers rejected his work. He died in 2009.

Allan Cornford, in We Walk upon Dragons (2024), argues that the verses about Rahab describe the destruction of this planet and that the event is the ruin implied in Genesis 1:2 and Jeremiah 4:23. That is his interpretation. The text does not state it.

CK Quarterman first wrote about Rahab and the asteroid belt in November 2011 on his author blog.

## What the Evidence Says

Astronomy does not support the hypothesis. The asteroid belt holds only about 3 percent of the Moon’s mass, far too little for a planet. Meteorites from the belt date to about 4.5 billion years ago, which matches the formation of the solar system and not a later explosion. Most astronomers hold that Jupiter’s gravity kept the belt’s material from ever forming a planet.

Claims about Mars are also disputed. Crater counts show Martian surfaces of many different ages, which points to impacts over a very long time and not a single barrage. The “Face on Mars” in Cydonia proved to be a natural mesa in Mars Global Surveyor images from 1998.

The Bible gives its own reasons for caution. Isaiah 27:1 begins “In that day” and speaks of a future judgment on leviathan. Psalm 74:13–14 and Job 26:12 place the dragon in the waters. Most commentators read Rahab as a chaos monster of the sea or as a name for Egypt.

## Bottom Line

The Hebrew text describes a proud power that God broke in ancient days, and it links that power with the dragon and the serpent. It does not say planet. The link to the asteroid belt is a modern proposal that astronomy does not support. It remains speculation.

## Sources

Allan Cornford, We Walk upon Dragons (Copyright © 2024 Allan Cornford).

CK Quarterman, “Scientists Find Evidence of Home of Fallen Angels,” author blog, November 11, 2011.

“Phaeton (hypothetical planet),” Wikipedia, covering Olbers, the name Phaethon, Van Flandern and the accretion model that replaced the idea.

“Face Off,” Windows to the Universe (April 1998), on the Mars Global Surveyor images of the Cydonia Face.

The King James Bible and Strong’s Concordance (public domain).

## About the Author

CK Quarterman is a USAF veteran and independent author. Through CKQbooks (ckqbooks.com) he writes about the Watchers, giants and malaterrestrials, a term he coined for evil earthbound non-human intelligences. Truth · History · Scripture