Commentary Par IX 115-117

The enjambment in the second line of the tercet creates Dante's desired effect: surprise.  Not only does Rahab's name cause us (at least temporary) consternation, what Folco goes on to say of her does also.  Not only is a whore among the saved, she is among the loftiest souls whom we see here.

Among the first commentators, only the author of the Codice cassinese (DDP Cassinese.Par.IX.117) said that by the 'highest rank' Dante indicates the Empyrean, which is what he should have meant, since none of the Hebrew (and a very few other) souls saved in the Harrowing of Hell is anywhere recorded as going anywhere else, not even by Dante.  That anonymous commentator would wait for nearly five and a half centuries for company (Torraca in 1905 [DDP Torraca.Par.IX.115-117]).  Torraca also believes the reference is to the Empyrean.  The passage is, as many commentators protest, difficult to understand.  Nonetheless, Benvenuto da Imola (DDP Benvenuto.Par.IX.115-117) seems quite certain that her highest 'rank' pertains to the hierarchy of the souls gathered in Venus.  Most of those after him who elect to identify her location also think the reference is to the planet.  Only in the last one hundred years has the pendulum of scholarly opinion begun to swing, if only slightly, in the direction of the Empyrean.  Allegretti (Alle.2002.1), pp. 143-44, makes a strong case for that resolution.  The only problem is that, in the entire passage ([Par IX 113-122]), all other references are unquestionably to the sphere of Venus (vv. 113 [qui]; 115 [là]; 116 [a nostr' ordine congiunta]; 118-120 [questo cielo... fu assunta]; 122 [in alcun cielo]).  And so it would seem that this is yet another instance of an authorial slip (see C.Par.IX.119-123).