Rachav lived a life of prestigious ignominy from the age of 10 until she did complete teshuvah at age 50, accepting Elokai Yisrael as the One True God—which meant taking on His definition of morality too.
When the holy spies, Kalev & Pinchas, entered her inn (located in the fortified wall of the city), she realized who they were & offered to hide them.
On the rooftop lay stalks of flax.
Rachav hid the 2 men under these layers of flax until she determined when they could safely continue their journey back.
In return, Am Yisrael spared the lives of Rachav and her family. Rachav made such profoundly wholehearted teshuvah that she merited to marry Yehoshua bin Nun himself and several of our most valuable Neviim & Neviot descended from their union.
Mentions of linen and its original flax occur frequently throughout Tanach, Gemara, and most other Torah sources.
Yet most of us lack a solid idea of what flax is & the process for making linen.
What do flax stalks look like anyway?
Like this:
I was surprised to see how straightforward the process is.
Yes, it takes a long time and parts of it are labor-intensive, but it looks very doable and he got quite a lot of flax out of a surprisingly small square of earth.
It's very different than harvesting wheat.
For example, harvesting the stalks means just leaning over & giving some hearty tugs and until they rip out of the ground.
You don't need an animal or even a tool.
Yes, it's labor-intensive. But it's not complicated.
Also, if you can't understand the host's charming Scots-Irish accent (never even knew Scots-Irish existed!), please note the nearly 14-minute video comes with English captions stating the stages & months of the process. So that way, you still know what's going on:
LINEN - Making Linen Fabric from Flax Seed
I really found it helpful in understanding what flax & linen are and how the process works. It comes up so often in Jewish sources, yet I never had a picture in my mind of how it all looks. And now I do!
So if you also lack that knowledge, I hope you'll enjoy the video.