In the Beginning: A Study in Genesis 37-50Muestra

How can we trust God to work on our family while we work on ourselves?

Most everyone has at least one family member making foolish short-sighted decisions that will harm and hinder their family and future. It is tempting for other family members to put their life on hold to save the flailing family member from themselves. When we do that, however, we are not only helping them but also hurting ourselves. The time, energy, and money we take from our life, marriage, and family to deposit in theirs are often simply transferring their pain to us. In the story of Judah and Tamar, we see this very scenario playing out. Still, we also see that over time thanks to His patient grace, God works to transform the life and legacy of Judah without Joseph needing to carry the burden for his brother.

With the story of Joseph just getting underway in Genesis 37, the account of Judah and Tamar, at first glance, appears to be an unnecessary interruption to the thickening plot line. The focus of Moses at the end of Genesis is on Jacob primarily and his son Joseph secondarily. Therefore, this section fits within the framework of the book’s conclusion as Judah is, like Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons. This scene helps us see Judah’s sinfulness as he is, in many ways, a young man, much like his father was at that same age. Over time, God will transform Judah, as He did his father, Jacob, from a godless to a godly man fit to be a patriarch carrying the covenant promises onto the next generations.

The hillbilly redneck soap opera of Jacob’s family takes a very daytime television talk show turn in Genesis 38. Both Abraham and Isaac had dreaded the thought of their sons intermarrying with Canaanite women, as it would cause them to wander from God (Genesis 24:3, 28:1). Judah did just that and had three sons named Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er then married a woman named Tamar, and without fanfare or details, we are told that Er was a wicked man that God killed.

It was customary at that time for a widow to be married by her husband’s brother, who would care for her, protect her, and give her sons to ensure she had a stake in the family’s inheritance and to look after her in her old age (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). Therefore, the duty to care for Tamar fell on the next son, Onan. Onan was happy to sleep with Tamar but refused to meet his obligation of caring for her. So, he sought to enjoy intimacy with her but not impregnate her or have any devotion to her. This is selfish and abusive. Despite wild speculative conjecture about the sin of Onan, he was disobeying God and dishonoring Tamar by having sex without wanting to be obligated to her in any way or care for his widowed sister-in-law. Apparently, Judah was not much of a father as Er and Onan were both godless men, and God then killed Onan as he had his brother Er.

Poor Tamar, who had now lost, in essence, two husbands that were godless men, was then taken into the home of her father-in-law Judah, who sought to take care of her. He asked her to wait for his youngest son, Shelah, to grow up and promised to give her in marriage to him. Some years later, Shelah had grown up, but Judah failed in his promise to give Tamar to him as a wife.

So, like Eve who ruled over Adam, Sarah gave Abraham to sleep with her maidservant Hagar, and Rachel, who gave Judah’s father Jacob to sleep with her maidservant Bilhah, Tamar took matters into her own hands rather than trusting God by faith. She dressed up like a prostitute, intent on seduction. Judah slept with Tamar, not knowing that it was because she veiled her face. However, he did not have the resources to pay for the prostitution, so he gave her the equivalent of his credit card and driver’s license to hold as collateral.

Tamar became pregnant by the unsuspecting Judah. Three months later, Judah discovered that Tamar had become pregnant by acting as a prostitute and became hypocritically self-righteous, demanding that she be burned to death. In this, Judah demonstrated the same callous heart that compelled him to sell his brother into slavery, lie to his father, and not mourn the death of his two oldest sons.

Tamar then produced the items Judah had left with the prostitute he laid with, revealing that he had impregnated her. Caught in his sin, Judah rightly declared that she was more righteous than he, that he had sinned against her by not providing her with his son Shelah as a husband and never slept with her again. Like Rebekah before her, Tamar gave birth to twin boys and named them Perez and Zerah.

In an ironic plot twist, Jacob the trickster had been tricked into believing his son Joseph was dead by his son Judah, who Tamar then tricked into becoming the father of his daughter-in-law’s children. The theological point of the story (that Judah is much like his father) was before his conversion. God has as much work to do in preparing Judah to become a covenant patriarch as He did with his father, Jacob because through the descendants of Judah would come King David and the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. Judah’s sexual immorality also starkly contrasts Joseph’s sexual purity, which we will study next.

Question:

In the act of God’s grace, Jesus descends from the family line of Judah. Look up the following Scriptures to see this clearly (Matthew 1:1-3; Hebrews 7:13; Revelation 5:5).