Genesis 38--Judah and Tamar

Before we get started today, this is another one of those passages in the Bible that may not be appropriate for the youngest of readers.  It's a real thing that happened and the narrative is descriptive, not prescriptive.  With that said, let's get to the passage.

READ:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+38&version=ESV
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.38
Judah and Tamar

38 It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. 2 There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went in to her, 3 and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er. 4 She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. 5 Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. Judah was in Chezib when she bore him.

6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. 8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. 10 And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also. 11 Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, “Remain a widow in your father's house, till Shelah my son grows up”—for he feared that he would die, like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house.

12 In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. 13 And when Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,” 14 she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. 15 When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. 16 He turned to her at the roadside and said, “Come, let me come in to you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, “What will you give me, that you may come in to me?” 17 He answered, “I will send you a young goat from the flock.” And she said, “If you give me a pledge, until you send it—” 18 He said, “What pledge shall I give you?” She replied, “Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand.” So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. 19 Then she arose and went away, and taking off her veil she put on the garments of her widowhood.

20 When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her. 21 And he asked the men of the place, “Where is the cult prostitute who was at Enaim at the roadside?” And they said, “No cult prostitute has been here.” 22 So he returned to Judah and said, “I have not found her. Also, the men of the place said, ‘No cult prostitute has been here.’” 23 And Judah replied, “Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat, and you did not find her.”

24 About three months later Judah was told, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.” And Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.” 25 As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, “By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant.” And she said, “Please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.” 26 Then Judah identified them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not know her again.

27 When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. 28 And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, “This one came out first.” 29 But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said, “What a breach you have made for yourself!” Therefore his name was called Perez. 30 Afterward his brother came out with the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah.

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I'm going to take a guess that most of you have never read this chapter in the Bible unless you have undertaken a Bible-reading plan that tries to get you to read the entire Bible in a certain period of time.  This is one of the passages that most people would skip if given the choice.  Even so, Tamar is going to be one of the few women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1 (specifically, verse 3).  For reasons you'll probably figure out rather quickly, this would probably be a story that you'd want to skip over when you're telling your family's history, but God insists on mentioning as part of the history on how His Son, Jesus was born to show how He can work all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.  Before we jump headlong into today's passage, let's look at one relevant passage from the New Testament that is going to show that what Tamar was dealing with was wrong and would be addressed specifically by the apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth.

1 Corinthians 7:1Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (ESV)

Let's also be clear that one sin does not justify another.  There is a lot of sin, corruption, rebellion and wickedness going on in this passage.  Let's try to break it down as I give some of the main points.

First, Judah gets involved with a Canaanite woman.  We've already seen God forbid this several times and that Abraham and Isaac both took steps to make sure that their sons married women from the land of their forefathers, but Jacob had burned that bridge with his time that spent living with his uncle Laban, so now his sons are living among the Canaanites and naturally desire to take wives for themselves.  We've already seen that Jacob's sons with the exception of Joseph are pretty morally corrupt in as much as they have plotted to murder their own brother and Joseph's life was saved because this brother, Judah, asked, "What profit is there in murder?" and they decide to sell their brother Joseph into slaver for the price of 20 pieces of silver--if split 10 ways between the 10 brothers involved, it means that each was willing to take 2 shekels of silver to pretend that their brother had been torn apart by wild beasts.

Why did God warn His people to not marry the Canaanite women?  Because he said they would lead them into all kinds of wickedness and idolatry and make their hearts divided and they would choose to follow the gods of their wives instead of following Him.  We will see over and over again that idolatry and sexual immorality go hand-in-hand throughout the entire Bible, and I have a feeling that's at the root of what is going on here.  Jacob's disregard to heed God's command for his children and their disobedience to that command themselves led to at least one grandchild of Jacob that was so wicked that he had to be put to death.

Tradition of that time is that if an older brother died and left a widow without any male children to be heirs or to take care of her that the next oldest brother would take the widow as his wife and have children with her until she had a male child and it would be treated as if it was the son of the brother who had died, so that his family line should pass on.  However, Er's brother Onan also appears to be wicked and not willing to fulfill his duty as Tamar's husband and he intentionally went through with the act for his pleasure while making sure to not impregnate Tamar and have her bear a son that would not be treated as his own, so because he did what was wicked in the sight of the Lord, he also was put to death.

Judah's youngest son was apparently too young to have Tamar be given to him, and it appears that Judah is afraid that he will lose all of his sons, so while he says he intends to give Tamar to his youngest, Shelah, he really has no intention of doing so, and this becomes apparent to Tamar.  So, after the death of Judah's wife, Tamar decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and trick Judah into having sex with her.  While it's not mentioned here, Judah must have had some kind of reputation that would lead Tamar to believe that this would work and that he would be willing to have relations with a prostitute, and I think this once again comes back to the moral degradation that came from living among the Canaanites for so long and even taking a Canaanite woman as his wife, as prostitution was an acceptable thing in Canaanite culture and seen as part of their worship to their gods.

I'll let you read the details of the encounter yourself, but notice that Tamar is careful to take in pledge someone that cannot be mistaken for anyone else, as the things she takes would be equivalent to "identity papers" at the time.  When the time comes that she is called out for her sin, she will have the evidence to point the finger back at the one that is truly to blame here.  Judah was ready to have her burned for her sin until she revealed that he was the father (probably in front of everyone who had been called as witnesses for her execution) and he confessed, "She is more righteous than I....."

God blessed Tamar with twins and it would be through Perez that the line of the Messiah would continue, though we won't know that until the end of the book of Genesis.  This seems a strange aside from the story of Joseph until you realize that it is part of the story of the Messiah and God included it intentionally.  Would this be the choice you would have made if you were God?  Would you have let your Son be born to this son of Jacob who had tried to sell his brother into slaver, make promises he didn't intend to keep with regard to the marriage of his son, and then turned to the comfort of a prostitute after the loss of his Canaanite wife?  The Bible gives us the real stories of those involved--the good, the bad and the ugly, and sometimes, like here, and in other places like with David and Bathsheba (we'll also see her mentioned in the genealogy of Christ as "the wife of Uriah"), it can get very ugly.  Yet, God uses these situations for His ultimate good to bring about the salvation of the whole world through His one and only Son, Jesus.