Gospel Light Christian Church Thru-The-Bible Series (22.4)

The Book of Genesis

Genesis Chapter 38 - Read this Bible passage once through before referring to the notes below.

The Triumph of Justice over Judah’s Decadence

v.1-5 After masterminding the sale of Joseph to Egypt, Judah separated himself “from his brethren” (v.1), journeyed to Adullam, and pitched his tent adjacent to a person named Hirah.  Judah’s marriage to “a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah” (v.2) was out of harmony with the will of the patriarch not to marry Canaanite women (cf. 24:3; 28:1).  Jacob seems to have less and less control over the behaviour of his family since the Dinah incident in chapter 34.  From this marriage, Judah has 3 sons: Er (v.3), Onan (v.4), and Shelah (v.5).

v.6-11 The heart of this story revolves around Tamar (v.6), who was married to Judah’s firstborn – Er, and who has the desire to bear Judah’s heir.  But Er was killed by God because of he “was wicked in the sight of the LORD” (v.7).  The nature of his evil activity is not described but it must have been serious to merit such a judgement.  Er left no heir, so according to the law of levirate marriage, his brother Onan was to marry the childless widow and “raise up seed to thy brother” (v.8).  Onan’s marriage to Tamar had the primary purpose of ensuring that the line of the deceased Er would continue through his widow.  The child born of this levirate relationship carries on the name of his deceased father and eventually inherits the family estate.  This is the first mention in the Bible of levirate marriage but it was common in ancient Near Eastern law codes.  Later Biblical law spells out the particulars of the levirate in Deutronomy 25:5-10 and it exists as an institution even into Jesus’ day (cf. Matt. 22:23-30; Lu. 20:27-35).

Onan had no plan to fulfill his responsibility because he “knew that the seed should not be his” (v.9).  But he was willing to use the custom to have Tamar and “went in unto [her]”.  To avoid producing “seed to his brother,” he would “spilled it on the ground”.  Onan was another wicked member of the family because he would use the law to gratify the flesh, but rather than take the responsibility bound up in the custom, he would destroy the seed.  From generation to generation, immoral people have repeated this attitude of sexual gratification without marital responsibility, which is contrary to God’s purposes.  The Lord slew Onan as well because “the thing which he did displeased the LORD” (v.10).  The death of Judah’s two older sons soon after marrying Tamar made Judah hesitate to give his third son.  He promised he would give Shelah to Tamar after “Shelah…be grown” (v.11) but he eventually withheld his youngest son from her “lest peradventure he die also”.

This is a picture of a corrupt and decadent family.  Judah continues down the course of irresponsibility – he had earlier moved the sale of Joseph, then departed from his family and married a Canaanite.  The fruit of that union had been thorough evil, and thus brought God’s judgement.  Now, he refused to give the youngest son to Tamar, who according to the law had the right to be the mother of the heir.  The failure and the refusal of the men in the family to live obediently to God’s laws and to fulfill their responsibility faithfully had clearly been the cause of complications.

v.12-23 The picture of Judah remained that of decadence and picture of Tamar now develops as one who is willing to take a great risk to obtain what was her right.  When the time was right (v.12, i.e. after “Judah’s wife died,” where there would be no more chance of Judah having an heir through her) and at the time of the sheepshearing festival (v.13, which was often a time for licentious and unrestrained behaviour among the Canaanites), Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute to lure Judah into what was for him an immoral union because “she saw that Shelah was grown and she was not given unto him to wife” (v.14).  Judah had not honoured his word and kept his promise to observe Tamar’s right to bear the heir in his family.

When Judah first saw her, he identified her as “an harlot” (v.15).  Judah’s decadence is revealed in the coarseness of his request – “Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee” (v.16).  All he desired was sexual gratification and when Tamar asked for payment for her services, he promised her “a kid from the flock” (v.17) in exchange for the satisfaction of his base desires.  As a pledge until Judah could pay in full, he gave her his “signet…bracelets, and...staff” (v.18).  The signet was probably a cylinder seal carried around the neck on a cord; the bracelets probably referred to the cord; and the staff probably had distinctive identifying marks carved into it. 

Tamar’s scheme succeeded (v.19) and Judah, the deceiver of Jacob over Joseph’s sale is now the deceived, by a member of his own household.  When Judah later attempted to make payment, he was unable to find Tamar (v.20-22).  And Judah would rather leave the pledged items with that “harlot” than conduct an all-out search for her.  A public search for her would be more of a loss than gain in Judah’s estimation because, evidently, a prostitute had outwitted and taken advantage of him, and he did not want his shameful deed to become a laughingstock in the region.

Tamar played on the vice of Judah to “conceived by him” (cf. v.18) and her deception worked.  She did what justice and the death of her husband demanded of her.  It is not appropriate to judge her by the Christian ethics of our day because, according to the prevailing Hittite and Assyrian custom of having the duty of levirate marriage performed by the father of the deceased, her actions, though deceptive and very dangerous for her, were within the custom of her day.

v.24-26 This account adds hypocrisy to Judah’s deceptiveness, dishonesty and decadence.  When Judah came to know that Tamar “is with child by whoredom” (v.24), his initial self-righteous reaction was to give the orders, “Bring her forth, and let her be burned”, which was an unusual punishment for harlotry.  Later Mosiac law commanded stoning as the usual punishment (cf. Deut. 22:20-24); only priests’ daughters or women guilty of certain forms of incest were burned (cf. Lev. 20:14; 21:9).  Therefore, Judah’s response appears to be an impulsive outburst of indignation more than the reflection of a considered judicial enforcement for sins of sexual violations.  It would thus seems that Judah is acting on behalf of his youngest son Shelah to whom Tamar is betrothed but not married.

When Tamar was brought before Judah, she produces the evidences that will identify the other partner by whom she is now with child (v.25).  Judah realised at this moment that he is incapable of punishing her because he discovered that he himself had been responsible for her pregnancy – he was as immoral as the one he wanted to burn with fire!  Tamar was vindicated by these words of Judah – “She hath been more righteous than I” (v.26).  What he meant was that Tamar was more in the right than he, for he did not fulfill his responsibilities (cf. 11, 14), whereas Tamar did nothing that the law did not entitle her to do, although her method was desperate and deceptive.  She won the right to be the mother of Judah’s children and, in the final analysis of this dark drama of a corrupt family, was held up as the more righteous.

v.27-30 The conclusion to this sad, tangled story in the family of Judah was that God granted twins to Tamar (v.27) – the line of Judah continued because of her.  The births were unusual.  As the 1st child emerges from Tamar’s womb, the midwife ties a red string around his hand to identify him as the firstborn (v.28) but the 2nd child broke out first instead, prompting the midwife to exclaim, “How hast thou broken forth?” (v.29).  The name “Pharez” (i.e. he who breaks through) signified the completion of Tamar’s stuggle and also depicted the destiny of the tribe of Perez, who later became predominant (cf. 46:12; Num. 26:20).  The 2nd child was named “Zarah” (v.30) because a scarlet thread was tied to his hand before Pharez forced through to be born first.

These births are a reminder of the births of Jacob and Esau (cf. 25:24-26).  In both cases, the younger struggled to be first.  In the birth of Pharez, it was as if the promise given to Rebekah had been revived in Judah’s line.  In Judah’s family, in spite of his own efforts to halt Tamar’s opportunity to conceive, twins were born, and the younger surpassed the older.  Judah will soon learn likewise that in spite of his attempts, together with his brothers, to thwart God’s plan that elder brothers should submit to the younger, Joseph leadership over his brothers could not be so easily set aside.

This account of Judah reveals the way God was working on Judah through retributive justice within his own household.  He needed to learn that when he disregard God’s plan and live a life of self-gratification, God will expose, confront, confound, and correct him.  If it had been left up to Judah, the family would have assimilated with Canaantites but Tamar retrieved the family line and served as the corrective for Judah.