And the woman taking the men, hid them, and said: I confess they came to me, but I knew not whence they were:
Rashi
And she hid them. There are scriptural verses that speak of the plural as if it were singular. Since she was in a hurry to hide them and she hid them in a narrow place it was as though they were one person. The Midrash of Rabbi Tanchuma states ‘That these two men were Pinchos and Caleiv, and Pinchos stood before them but they did not see him because he was [invisible] like an angel.’ Another interpretation: She hid each of them separately. We find a similar verse: ‘Oil and incense gladden the heart’ and it does not say יְשַׂמְחוּ לֵב, in the plural.
Hebrew and Aramaic words are the commentator’s citations of the sacred text; the English translation that follows each is the translator’s.
Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.