Judah, Tamar, and Yahweh

If you do not know the Judah-Tamar story (or should I say the Tamar-Judah story) don't read this without first dipping your feet in the wild river that is Genesis chapter 38. This story has perplexed scholars for decades, even with the contribution of great narrative critics and experts like Robert Alter.

I am drawn to critical details of the stories found within Scripture. Call it midrash, extrapolation, or sheer ruminating--I love to go the edges of the story and ask how God might be found "in the background, reaching from limb to limb" (to paraphrase Flannery O'Connor).

My friend Wade calls this "going to the gaps." Or, he got that phrase from someone else...I cannot recall.

Here's how I recently retold this story to my community of faith.


Judah sets up the marriage between Er and Tamar. Er dies because he’s got some moral issues. It seems Jewish persons are more comfortable with God being involved in death than we typically are. Tamar now needs a husband, according to Jewish tradition and customs known to this part of the world regardless of religious persuasion. That little part of Torah is known as the “levirate law”(Deut. 25; Ruth 3-4)—a woman should marry the next oldest brother in order to preserve the dead brother’s lineage and to give the widow a place and voice within culture.

Onan becomes the lucky guy to take on his brother’s wife. Apparently he goes along with the arrangement right up until the part about having to consummate the new covenant. This act of non-consummation (for lack of a better word) has come to be known as “Onanism”—just thought you’d like to know that little factoid.

God does to Onan what he did with Er—“you’re fired”—God strikes him dead. Two dead brothers, a woman twice widowed, and a whole lot of confusion. Judah, the patriarch and leader looks around and does the math: the one common denominator in all this mess and death is Tamar.

So, Judah does what any mean person would do if he wants to punish a young woman: He forces her to go back and live with her parents, bringing her more attention for acts she was never responsible for in the first place. The writer of Genesis tells us that Judah has another son he could give Tamar (were he a strict follower of Torah) but he decides that is not in his best interest considering the two funerals he’s just paid for involving his two eldest sons.

Tamar is sent to live with her parents. For Judah, she's a problem more than she is a person (I mean...two dead sons, c'mon you do the math).

After a long time…in Scripture you know the story is about to get real interesting when it says “after a long time”…Judah goes through his own hard time: his wife Shua dies. He takes a buddy with him to Vegas once he’s done with the mourning process. Ok, it wasn’t Vegas, you must read your Bibles carefully--the town is called Timnah.

Somehow Tamar finds out about her father-in-laws travel plans. And she decides that if she is to get what she needs to survive and have any social value, she’s going to have to take matter into her own hands. Tamar decides to play “the whore” (the Hebrew indicates) by wearing a veil. The veil indicates Tamar knows exactly what she’s doing: she’s seducing the man who’s denied her all these months and possibly years.

Judah must not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, because he does not recognize her upon approach—that’s either a testimony to how drunk Judah is (like Jacob with Rachel: after all that hard work, how do you not know you’ve been given the wrong sister? How drunk do you have to be unable to distinguish between the hot sister and the one with weak eyes?)…or to how little he is paying attention.

Either way, the text makes things pretty clear: Tamar is approaching this as a business proposition and he’s approaching this as a “boys will be boys” moment. Both know what they want, and both, in fact get it. Because Judah cannot pay Tamar for the services rendered, he leaves his drivers license and credit cards with her. The seal he leaves with her is his identity encased in a cylinder he would have wore around his neck. Like Essau, he’s willing to trade a great deal for a moment of satisfying his fleshly cravings.

Some time passes, three months to be exact. Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant and becomes incensed. “Torah requires me as a man of unscrupulous principles to do the right thing,” (the irony is so thick). Tamar must be burned (according to Torah, she could be hanged, burned, stoned, strangulation, beheading. “Criminals who were to be burned or stangled had to stand in dung up to their knees,” (Towner, 252).
But before the story can get too out of hand, Tamar sends a prophetic word back to Judah. Like Nathan approaching David, Tamar exposes Judah for the Torah violator he really is not the do-gooder he claims to be. Judah has made a mess of his role/part in the story, Tamar is not afraid to bring this to the surface (not that she can claim the moral high ground either).

Only the Bible would continue with the story. Tamar gives birth to twins, a familiar twist in the Genesis narrative—one of these twins will be in the linage of King David!

There’s a word from God in all this confusion, entrapment and mess. In fact, it is usually in the mess of life that God has the space to impart his holy ways. It’s ironic isn’t it? We tend to think that God works best with perfect people, who hair is cut just right, who knows all the right language—the people who look the part. But it seems that God isn’t interested so much in people who look the part. It seems like he’s interested in people who make a mess of the part. People who, like Judah, are more interested in appearing virtuous than doing the virtuous things required of us (protecting the innocent and vulnerable, practicing justice for a widow who’s lost two husbands, abstaining from giving in to lust and physical longing which turns a woman into “the sum of her parts” a far cry from the way Genesis describing women being equally created in God’s image).

Yes, Genesis gives us permission to state that God is interested in people who make a mess of the part more than people who pretend to “look the part.”

Don’t believe me? Turn to Matthew’s genealogy when you have a momentt. Matthew, as I mentioned in a sermon during advent season, is interested in involving the messy people of Jesus’ lineage: particularly the messy non-Jewish women who are involved in a sexual sworee.

Tamar's, Bathsheeba's, Ruth's, and Rahab's--all in the lineage of Israel and Jesus. Apparently while many church cultures run from the mess, God runs towards it.

I think I'm beginning to really love this thing called faith.