Deeper Commentary
Gen 38:1 It happened at that time- Judah was intended to be in the line of Messiah. And yet he married an unbeliever. It would seem that he married young, and he made his sons marry young likewise. Note that his sons are recorded as dying “in Canaan”, before Judah left Canaan to emigrate to Egypt. This requires that the events of Gen. 38 occurred whilst Joseph was suffering in Egypt, and are typical of the sin of Israel / Judah in the Gentile world before their repentance and acceptance by Joseph / Jesus. As discussed on :6, there is a chronological issue with this chapter, and the Hebrew may mean that these events happened at the time that Judah went down from his brothers sometime earlier, rather than "that time" connecting with Gen. 37.
However, it is very hard to fit all the events of this chapter
into the time period between when Joseph at 17 was sold into Egypt, and
when at 30 he stood before Pharoah. I suggest that this is what today we
would call a footnote or excursus- to remind us that the Judah we have
just read about in Gen. 37 had messed up big time. And his effort to save
Joseph, who had replaced him as the firstborn, was a fruit of his
repentance. He had lost two sons, and this led him towards not wanting his
father to have to go through losing sons, not Joseph nor later Benjamin.
We too are to trade upon our life experience, including of our failures,
to come towards sensitivity towards others and their feelings. So "at that
time" may effectively mean 'It should be understood that the events at
that time should be read in the light of Judah's earlier messed up life'.
That Judah went down from his brothers- See on Gen. 44:33. He separated himself from God's people, associated with Gentiles and was led into sin. But the point of the story is that God still worked through him, because Tamar was directly in the line of Messiah. God's purposes were not stopped by human failure.
There were only 22 years from this time to the emigration of the family to
Egypt, and it is noted that Judah's adult sons died in Canaan. Therefore we
can conclude that this separation was immediately after the attempted murder
of Joseph (:1), so perhaps the result of the sin was a disagreement between
the brothers, so that Judah went off on his own.
"Went down" connects with how at the end of the preceding
chapter, Joseph's loss makes Jacob feel he is 'going down' to his grave;
and in the next chapter, we read that Joseph "went down" into Egypt. So
Gen. 38 is not in fact out of context. We are being shown that through his
various sins, Judah knew in essence the experience of his father and
brother.
And visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah- "Visited"
is AV "turned in"- Heb. 'to bend away', the language of apostasy.
Clearly Judah is presented as having turned away from his brothers
to the Canaanites, even though the family of Jacob were a "stench" to the
Canaanites (Gen. 34:30). Judah therefore clearly identified and
intermarried with the Canaanites and thereby separated from his own
family. The interlude of Genesis 38 clearly presents Judah as a man who
had been weak and yet through his response to his sins, was made strong.
"Adullam" literally means 'to turn aside', so Judah turned aside to the
place of turning aside.
Gen 38:2 Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name
was Shua. He took her, and went in to her- Shua was the name of her
father, according to the LXX and also :12. "Saw... took... went in to her"
is the language of David's sin with Bathsheba; note the use of messengers to try to get themselves out of the consequences of their action.
"See... take" is used throughout Genesis in a negative sense (Gen.
3:6; 6:2; 12:15; 34:2). Judah took a Canaanite woman and shamefully treated her. Esau took [s.w.] Canaanite
women, but married them and treated them responsibly (Gen. 36:2). But by
grace, it is Jacob's line and not Esau's who were chosen. There is a theme
in the record that the sons of Jacob were not better than the sons of
Ishmael and Esau who chose not to continue in God's covenant purpose, indeed
they were often worse; the only difference was that they chose to hand in
with God's grace.
"Canaanite" is the same word as "merchant", and we could conclude that Judah's initiative to sell Joseph to merchants was because he actually knew them and had been previously involved with them. He was possibly their son in law. The whole story is perhaps to show that from a man as mixed up and hypocritical as Judah, there arose the royal line of Israel's kings which would climax in the Lord Jesus. "Shua" means 'wealthy / opulent'. Perhaps we see here materialism in Judah; it was he who suggested selling Joseph and getting some money out of the whole thing, rather than just killing him. His interest in the 20 pieces of silver clearly connects with that of Judas [the same name as Judah] in the 30 pieces of silver for the Lord. His son Onan likewise means "wealthy".
However this incident also shows the great hypocrisy of the brothers in slaying the men of Shechem in Gen. 35, claiming that they could not possibly intermarry. When Judah had behaved as he did with Canaanites, and in any case, the brothers grabbed the women of Shechem for themselves afterwards.
Gen 38:3 She conceived, and bore a son; and he named him Er- He was slain for his wickedness (:7) and yet Judah's son Shelah had a son of the same name, to as it were replace him rather than leave this wicked man unremembered in the family (1 Chron. 4:21)."Er" is a reversal of the letters 're', the Hebrew word for evil, and a play is made on this in :7. This chapter emphasizes the deep unspirituality of Judah; and yet from him was to come the Messiah and future people of God. The function of the chapter is to show "that the pre-eminence of Judah in the patriarchal family was due exclusively to grace". We may also be left to perceive that unless God had providentially moved the family into Egypt, they would have intermingled with the Canaanites and lost their covenant relationship with Yahweh. Which again is an example of grace.
Gen 38:4 She conceived again, and bore a son; and she named him Onan-
Judah was probably only a few years older than Joseph, who was 17 at this
time (:1); perhaps he was 21 (Gen. 29:35 cp. Gen. 30:25). See on :6.
Gen 38:5 She yet again bore a son, and named him Shelah: and he was at
Chezib, when she bore him- Chezib means 'falsehood'. Why else mention the place?
Maybe the idea is that Judah wasn't present at the birth of his third
child because he was away at 'falsehood', perhaps implying he was involved
in an illicit relationship there.
Gen 38:6 Judah took a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar-
Er would have been very young at this time; for there were only 22 years
from the this time when Joseph was 17 (:1) to when the family moved to
Egypt. The 22 years can be calculated from Gen. 30:31; 31:41; 37:2,25;
41:46; 46:5,12. Judah was keen to see his sons married and to build up his
family; Isaac and Jacob married much older. So perhaps Judah, like his
fathers, was trying to force through the fulfilment of God's promises of a
multitudinous seed, although his attempts failed. Indeed for the history
to fit, it has been argued by Adam Clarke that Judah would have married as
a teenager and Er likewise. An alternative is to think that this chapter
is out of historical sequence and has been placed here for some narrative
purpose, and the "at that time" of :1 refers to some time other than the
events of Gen. 37. But the record may be demonstrating Judah's manic
desire to have children and force the fulfilment of the promises of
fruitfulness. Another possibility is that :1 should mean "It had come to
pass at the time that Judah went down from his brethren...". The incident
would then refer to an earlier incident; but if Joseph was 17 at the time
of chapter 37, then it would still mean that Judah was very young when he
married and these events happened.
"Tamar" means "palm tree" and was used as a fertility symbol. She was set up to be fertile, but was deceived, as she saw it, by Judah and his family God, Yahweh, so that she had no children. To be left a childless widow in another man's house was real social death. It seems she was made to wear the garments of widowhood for very many years (:14), so that she would be perceived as unavailable to any other man. Inflicted because of Judah's fears that she was a femme fatale, and his one remaining son would also die because of her. Instead of facing the truth that his two older sons had died because of their sins and not because of Tamar.
Gen 38:7 Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of Yahweh.
Yahweh killed him- Despite his youth (see on :6). We may think that
behaviour in our late teens or early 20s can be as it were scribbled
because we were young. But human behaviour counts to God, at whatever age.
We note that Yahweh killed wicked people at this time. And yet the sons of
Jacob had committed major wickedness in the effective murder of Joseph and
the massacre of Shechem. And yet Yahweh didn't kill them. This note about
Er demonstrates not only that once again, being the literal firstborn was
not related to spirituality; but also that the founding fathers of Israel
were preserved by pure grace. See on :10. "Wicked in the sight of Yahweh"
is the phrase used about the sins of Sodom (Gen. 13:13).
Gen 38:8 Judah said to Onan, Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform
the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and raise up seed to your brother-
As noted on :6, Judah was desperate to generate a multitudinous seed in
his own strength and by his own devices. The Levirate laws in the later
law of Moses were clearly in existence before Moses' time. Some argue that
we should keep the Sabbath because it was in existence before Moses' time;
but on that basis, so should we keep this principle of raising up seed,
and also the separation between clean and unclean animals which was
clearly known at the time of the flood.
Gen 38:9 Onan knew that the seed wouldn’t be his; and it happened,
when he went in to his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground,
lest he should give seed to his brother- The sin was not masturbation as such, as has wrongly been supposed, but not loving his brother and being selfish.
It was a sin of ommission, cloaked under an appearance of
obedience- and God hates that. The same Hebrew phrase is used repeatedly of how the world's population in Noah's time corrupted God's way in the earth, and how God in appropriate response destroyed the earth (Gen. 6:11,12,13,17). There is therefore the implication that Judah wasn't interested in raising up a seed for God, but rather just wanted his own seed on the terms he wished. The phrase is repeatedly used in the prophets for how the earth / land of Judah was to be 'destroyed'. Judah were destroyed because like the historical Judah, they didn't want to raise a Godly seed.
Ewald suggests the Hebrew suggests that Onan did this 'whenever he went
in...' to her, taking sexual gratification from her without consummation.
He therefore treated her as a prostitute, for his own pleasure; and was
slain for it. And yet Judah his father used a prostitute at least once
(and we could infer that he often used prostitutes, as Tamar knew his
behaviour to be predictable) and was not slain. Again we see that Judah,
one of the prominent founders of Israel, was saved by grace.
We note that in the story of Ruth, an anonymous relative
refuses to raise up seed to his dead relative- and was apparently not
slain. Indeed Dt. 25:5-10 taught that such a person should be shamed but
not executed. But here, Onan is slain for that same sin of omission;
perhaps because he didn't just refuse, he gave an appearance of obedience
which was fake. Perhaps the lesson is that God hates such hypocrisy. And
surely many others committed it. So we see how the same sin is punished
with immediate death in Onan's case, whereas others commit the same sin
but don't experience that judgment at that time. We are to learn from this
that even though sinners don't always drop dead immediately, sin is still
sin and the judgment in God's book is just as real. That is why we have
Achan slain for touching the ark, the disobedient prophet killed by a
lion, Ananias and Sapphira slain immediately- whereas others apparently
get away with sin. The contrast is intentional, and serves as a reminder
to never forget that the wages of sin is indeed death, despite God's
patient grace. This should serve to shake us from the numbness and half
awareness with which man tends to drift through life.
Gen 38:10 The thing which he did was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and
He killed him also- Even in the darkness of a tent or inner room, God's eyes noticed every detail. Time and again Biblical history demonstrates that sins of silence and
omission are just as fatal as sins of public, physical commission. Onan
omitted to raise up seed to his brother, and was slain.
Gen 38:11 Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in your father’s house, until Shelah, my son, is grown up; for he said, Lest he also die, like his brothers. Tamar went and lived in her father’s house- Judah saw Tamar as some kind of femme fatale, responsible for the deaths of his two sons when clearly they died for their own sins. And yet she was to become the source of fruitfulness (Ruth 4:12) and directly in the line of Messiah (Mt. 1:3). Judah is again portrayed as totally wrong in his judgments and attitudes.
Gen 38:12 After many days, Shua’s daughter, the wife of Judah, died.
Judah was comforted, and went up to his sheepshearers to Timnah, he and
his friend Hirah, the Adullamite- One wonders if Judah was in an illicit homosexual relationship with this man. The word
for "friend" is also translated "lover". Having lost his wife
early, Judah was in the mood for living as a single man; and Tamar knew
this meant using prostitutes and capitalized upon that. We see here how so
many factors worked together, including serious human sin and dysfunction,
to result in a pregnancy given by God which led to the Messianic seed
(Ruth 4:12; Mt. 1:3). It is all an example of how God never gives up with
human weakness amongst His covenant people, but seeks to work His purpose
out despite it and through it.
Gen 38:13 It was told Tamar, saying, Behold, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep- Sheep shearing was associated with immorality and alcohol abuse. Tamar knew that Judah was the type who would sleep with prostitutes at such a time- again indicating his low moral character at this time.
Gen 38:14 She took off of her the garments of her widowhood, and
covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of
Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown
up, and she wasn’t given to him as a wife- The camera is trained as
it were directly upon her, so that we imagine her wrapping herself and
sitting in the gate, in the shadows. "Enaim" means 'place of the
opening of the eyes'. Through this sin, Judah's eyes were to be opened to
himself. And that was what made him sensitive to the sufferings of his
brother Joseph and his father Jacob.
There is a connection with how Rachel was not given [s.w.] to Jacob to wife when she ought to have been (Gen. 29:26). Circumstances repeated within the lives of the Abraham family, just as they do within and between our lives, that we might learn the lessons. Given the chronological issues discussed on :6, she was expecting to marry Shelah when he was just a teenager, which seems to mean that Judah had given her other reasons to think that he would not let her marry Shelah. Her motives may well have been simply revenge against Judah, whom she rightly considered a hypocrite. And yet from these poor motives came the one who would be in the direct line to the Messiah. We wonder if she did in the end marry Shelah, because he had children, who became respected within Judah (Num. 26:20; 1 Chron. 4:21-23).
We wonder what Tamar's motives were. It is fashionable to present her as the powerful feminist who fought back from an underdog position. But we can perhaps more realistically read her as a woman who is understandably and justifiably angry that Judah has messed around, and left her without children. She was desperate to fall pregnant at any cost. And whilst she was condemned to a life of celibacy by Judah, she observed him sleeping with whores when he had the inclination. She was angry with him, and the anger and frustration boiled over. And so she hatched the plan she did- and it worked perfectly, because she knew Judah and had spent many frustrated years watching his behaviour patterns. He was so angry that she was willing to die the death of a whore in order to by all means get pregnant and spite and shame Judah. But despite all that, it was from this unlikely pregnancy between Judah and Tamar that the line of Judah's kings was to come- and the Lord Jesus. Whatever dysfunctional background there is, it does not force us to sin. The Lord Jesus had it, but never sinned.
Gen 38:15 When Judah saw her, he thought that she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face- There may be a connection with how Jacob didn't know he had slept with Leah rather than Rachel. Perhaps there was such a culture of shame about sex that women covered their faces during intercourse; and we can understand a prostitute in those shame based societies wishing to do that. Again we see the strange continuities within the Abraham family, the same experiences passing from father to son. A different word for "prostitute" is used in :21,22; that word means a cult prostitute. It could be that Judah thought nothing of sleeping with cult prostitutes as part of idol worship, which makes his spirituality appear at an all time low.
In Gen. 37:26
Gen 38:16 He turned to her by the way, and said, Please come, let me come in to you, for he didn’t know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, What will you give me, that you may come in to me?- Tamar's plan was based upon the assumption that Judah on returning from a sheep shearing celebration would likely want a prostitute. And she was correct. Judah later sees her as "righteous" for what she did (:26). He presumably was felt to have a legal duty to get her pregnant even if Shelah refused. He had turned aside to Adullam, and now he turns aside to Tamar. His progressive failure was at Enaim, the place of the opening of eyes.
Gen 38:17 He said, I will send you a young goat from the flock. She
said, Will you give me a pledge, until you send it?- The fact Judah
was apparently unprepared for sleeping with a prostitute, having nothing
of value upon him to pay her apart from his personal identity items, all
suggests that he was drunk and just looking for opportunistic sex under
the influence of alcohol and lust.
Judah gives a pledge in Gen. 38:17 in connection with his immorality. It cannot be incidental that he later offers his life as a pledge to his father to guarantee the return of Benjamin (Gen. 43:8-10). We are surely meant to detect Judah's spiritual growth between these two "pledge" incidents. pledge" incidents. We note Judah offers to "bear the blame / sin" if Benjamin doesn't return (Gen. 43:9). He has matured from seeking to hide his blame / sin in his behaviour with Tamar.
Gen 38:18 He said, What pledge will I give you? She said, Your signet
and your cord, and your staff that is in your hand. He gave them to her,
and came in to her, and she conceived by him- These sound like large
demands, from a woman who was anonymous behind her veil. Judah perhaps
only agreed because he was drunk at the time, and felt desperate to have
sex at any cost. Judah's staff was the symbol of his rulership. By
grace alone it was later to be promised: "The sceptre shall not depart
from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come" (Gen.
49:10). The staff / sceptre he had abused and devalued was ultimately not
to be "lost" but to last eternally. But he had thrown it away in his mad
desire for immediate sexual gratification with a whore.
Gen 38:19 She arose, and went away, and put off her veil from her, and
put on the garments of her widowhood- The camera is as it were close
in now upon her, as we see her removing the veil and returning to who she
was.
Gen 38:20 Judah sent the young goat by the hand of his friend, the
Adullamite, to receive the pledge from the woman’s hand, but he didn’t
find her- The connections within the record continue; for Judah had
been party to using a goat to deceive his father (Gen. 37:31) just as his
father Jacob had used goat skin to deceive his father. Yet this family who
apparently 'never learnt', never 'got it', were the family God chose from
which to build His covenant people- in order to display His grace and
sovereign choice. The way Judah sent the payment through another person
reflects his desire for anonymity, and we note his subsequent fear of
shame over the issue. The fact he parted with his personal identity
documents, as it were, is therefore confirmation of my earlier suggestion
that he was a drunk man desperate to have sex at that moment at whatever
personal cost to his reputation.
Gen 38:21 Then he asked the men of her place, saying, Where is the
prostitute, that was at Enaim by the road? They said, There has been no
prostitute here- The word for "prostitute" differs from that in :15;
this one means a cult prostitute. Again the implication is that Judah
thought nothing of such idolatry.
Gen 38:22 He returned to Judah, and said, I haven’t found her; and
also the men of the place said, ‘There has been no prostitute here’-
All this enquiry would have meant that everyone knew what had happened.
Rotherham gives "devotee" for "prostitute", confirming the idea that Judah
slept with her on the basis of idolatry.
Gen 38:23 Judah said, Let her keep it, lest we be shamed. Behold, I
sent this young goat, and you haven’t found her- The fear of shame
confirms my earlier suggestion that he must have been drunk to behave like
this, giving his personal identification to an anonymous prostitute.
Judah is trying to present himself as an honourable man who kept
his pledge to send a goat. But he had not kept his pledge to give his son
to Tamar. Around the Lord's death we see the same attempt at petty
obedience to cover more major disobedience. And we can do the same, and so
much legalistic obedience is of this nature.
Gen 38:24 It happened about three months later, that it was told
Judah, saying, Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has played the prostitute; and
moreover, behold, she is with child by prostitution- The person who
told Judah this was presumably part of Tamar's plot. Because she was
technically free to marry. The reason given for the death penalty was that
she was a prostitute; and only Tamar or those party to her plan knew that
she had acted as one only for Judah. Perhaps they only knew she
was pregnant from prostitution because she herself had said as much. The
men of the place claimed there were no prostitutes operating there.
Judah said, Bring her out, and let her be burnt- This may not necessarily mean to be burnt to death, but rather to be branded in the cheek or forehead so that she would be stigmatized as a prostitute. If burning to death, this was a more extreme punishment than death by stoning. Burning was the specific punishment for a whore whose father was a priest. So we wonder whether Tamar's father was a pagan priest, thus making Judah and his family's involvement with her even more hypocritical. We note the obvious hypocrisy in Judah- it's a classic. He transferred his own guilt for immorality and usage of prostitutes onto another, namely a prostitute. And this is why religious people often condemn others in the strongest terms for what they themselves do. They subconsciously transfer their own sense of guilt and need for punishment onto another, whom they punish. And they at times do this by slandering and then punishing another person for the very sins which they themselves commit.
Burning to death for adultery was stipulated only for the wife of a priest (Lev. 21:9). Judah perhaps considered himself or Shelah to be the family priest, again showing his deep unspirituality and the tragic state of affairs within Jacob's family.
Judah didn't give Shelah to Tamar because he clearly feared that he would lose his son, just as he had lost two other sons and his daughter by Tamar. He was concerned about preserving his own inheritance, and assumed that Tamar was somehow cursed by God and would be the source of death rather than the continuation of his line. Whereas God worked through that woman, by utter grace, to ensure that Judah would have children through Tamar who would be in the line of Messiah. God works through human sin, in order to show His grace, as it comes to a climax in Jesus.
Gen 38:25 When she was brought out, she sent to her father-in-law,
saying, By the man, whose these are, I am with child. She also said,
Examine, please, whose these are- the signet, and the cords, and the staff - Just as Judah had said to his father, "See, is this your son's coat" (Gen. 37:32); so it was now said to him, in order to try to bring him to repentance for what he had done to Joseph and Jacob. We see similar repetition of circumstance in the brothers' encounters with Joseph- to try to lead them to repentance.
It's not merely some poetic justice; but these things were worked through
by the Spirit to bring people to realize how others felt when we sinned
against them. The Hebrew translated "cords" can mean a distinctive
personal garment. So Judah used a goat and a distinctive garment (Heb.) as
pledges, and was deceived with regard to them. Yet we have just read of
him using the blood of a goat on Joseph's garment to deceive his father.
Gen 38:26 Judah recognized them and said, She is more righteous than I, because I didn’t give her to Shelah, my son- Her motives may have been partly revenge against the hypocritical Judah who had purposefully tried to leave her in her father's house without children. But perhaps she believed in the promises of the Messianic seed and believed that Judah should produce Messianic ancestors; and indeed, the Lord's line is traced through their son Perez (Mt. 1:3). And this was her 'righteousness' in the matter.
Judah "recognized" / discerned his personal identifying items (Gen. 38:26) when Tamar exposes his sin; the same word is used of how Judah and the brothers challenged their father to recognize / discern Joseph's coat of many colours (Gen. 37:33). So through Judah's sin, he was led to appreciate how his father had felt. And that is why it is Judah who is so careful later to ensure his father is not made to feel about Benjamin how he did about the loss of Joseph.
"She is more righteous than I" is indeed a confession of sin and repentance. But Pharaoh said the same, and didn't retain the intensity. Whereas to his credit, it seems Judah remained humbled and his attitudes to Jacob and Benjamin reflect that abiding transformation. What Judah did was a serious sin, worthy of the Canaanites but not Israel: "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law: she is your son’s wife. You shall not uncover her nakedness... for all these abominations have the men of the land done that were before you, and the land became defiled); that the land not vomit you out also, when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. For whoever shall do any of these abominations, even the souls that do them shall be cut off from among their people" (Lev. 18:15,27-29). So we could also read "She is more righteous than I" to actually be a rather incomplete statement of repentance. Judah presents himself as righteous, and Tamar as more righteous than himself. The more usual expression is simply "I have sinned" (Ex. 9:27; Num. 22:34; Josh. 7:20; 1 Sam. 15:24,30; 26:21; 2 Sam. 12:13; 24:10,17). We might rather wish to find this on the lips of Judah at this point. As with Aaron after the golden calf incident, repentance is incomplete and hardly verbalized- but there is still fruit of it.
But Judah develops from this idea that he has at least some righteousness,
so that in Gen. 42:12-14 he says to Joseph: "What can we say to my lord?
What can we speak? Or how can we dec1are ourselves righteous? God has
found the iniquity of your servants". He realized finally that he has no
righteousness at all. And on that basis, Joseph / Jesus counts him as
righteous.
He knew her again no more- This could suggest that he had used her several times as a prostitute. Pregnancy after one act of intercourse is unusual, although clearly God's hand was in it. Her whole plan depended upon her getting pregnant by Judah so it would be unsurprising if she had played her trick several times.
Gen 38:27 It happened in the time of her travail that, behold, twins
were in her womb- The similarities are clear with Rebekah bringing
forth Esau and Jacob, and we are going to read a similar tension over the
matter of the firstborn. By now we are fully prepared for the firstborn
not to be the most blessed; and we are not disappointed. This was
something which God kept trying to teach the family over the generations,
but like us in some areas, they were very resistant to it. Judah
ends up effectively married to Tamar, although they never have sex (:26)-
so he lived as he had made her live. Why they didn't have sex isn't
explained- perhaps she refused him. And so life goes, that we come to
understand what we put others through. To help us to repentance, but also
to deepen our self understanding, our empathy for others, as we are
prepared for the Kingdom which we shall share with those we sinned
against. Judah and Tamar were the joint parents of the twin boys, and they
as it were replaced the two sons whom Judah had lost. We see here the
Divine ecology. And the implication is that Judah repented, although he is
not recorded as expressing it very clearly; and was blessed as a result.
The Judah of Gen. 38 is transformed. At this point, he presents as a man "motivated by self-interest, cold-hearted and detached from familial relationships, lacking judgement, untrustworthy, deceptive, self-righteous and merciless". But all that was finally transformed in the Judah who speaks with Joseph at the end.
Gen 38:28 When she travailed, one put out a hand, and the midwife took
and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, This came out first-
Scarlet seems a strange colour to use, seeing that there is plenty of red
blood flowing anyway at childbirth. Scarlet is the colour of kings and
rulers; they all realized that there was going to be tension over the
issue of which child emerged first from the womb, as in that culture, this
was so important. What now happens is God's way of trying again to teach
the family that the firstborn was not so significant, because the ultimate
firstborn was the promised Messianic seed of the future.
Gen 38:29 It happened, as he drew back his hand, that behold, his
brother came out, and she said, Why have you made a breach for yourself?
Therefore his name was called Perez- The theme of the second born
being the chosen one continues. It was accepted that Perez was the one in
the line of the Messianic seed and that this pregnancy was of God (Ruth
4:12), even though he was not technically the firstborn. "Made a breach"
is literally 'to spread abroad', and is the word used in the promises of
how the Messianic seed was to break forth or spread abroad (Gen. 28:14).
We note the theme in the Abraham family of sibling rivalry; the account here clearly echoes that of Jacob and Esau struggling, and the persistent failure in perceiving that birth order is irrelevant. We note too that Onan showed no loyalty to his brother Er, in refusing to raise up seed to his brother.
Gen 38:30 Afterward his brother came out, that had the scarlet thread
on his hand, and his name was called Zerah- As noted above, the
firstborn was to come "after" the younger. But the entire family struggled
to learn this. Although Jacob had made Joseph firstborn instead of Reuben
by giving him the priestly robe of many colours, at the end of his life,
Jacob still seems to bless Judah as the firstborn. They just would not
learn that order of birth was irrelevant to the only blessing that really
mattered. We too can be blind to some whole area of thinking or behaviour,
despite the Father's continual efforts to help us get our priorities
right. So the story concludes with Judah's repentance, and yet as
ever, that repentance doesn't mean that he 'got it' completely; he clearly
didn't, just as his father Jacob was to die uttering things which
reflected spiritual immaturity and a failure to 'get it'.
Previous Chapter
Next Chapter 
