Judah, Tamar and the Recognition of Wrong

Judah “went down”, yarad, the verb that closes over Joseph at the start of the next chapter: “Joseph was brought down to Egypt” (39:1). Adullam is a town in the lowland of Judah, where David will later hide in a cave (1 Samuel 22:1). “Turned in” means he pitched his tent beside Hirah.

“Saw” and “took” are the pair of verbs used of the sons of God in 6:2. Abraham and Isaac both forbade Canaanite wives for their heirs (24:3; 28:1), and Judah takes one without a word from anyone. She is never given her own name; 1 Chronicles 2:3 calls her Bathshua, which only means daughter of Shua.

Judah names the first son himself; his wife names the other two. Er means something like watchful or awake. The birth reports come one after another with no years between them, compressing a long stretch of time into three sentences.

“Conceived again” and then “yet again” in the next verse pace the births like a count. Onan’s name is built on on, strength or vigour, the same word Jacob uses of Reuben’s birth in 49:3.

Chezib sounds like kazav, a lie, and Micah plays on the same sound when he warns that “the houses of Achzib shall be a lie” (Micah 1:14). A town named Deception is where the son is born whom Judah will withhold under a false promise. The note that he was there when she gave birth hints that Judah was elsewhere.

Tamar means date palm. Her people and father are not named, although she returns to her father’s house in verse 11. Judah chooses a wife for his son as Abraham chose one for Isaac, and the choice is left without comment.

Er spelled backwards in Hebrew is ra, evil, and the verse sets the two words side by side: Er was ra in the sight of the LORD. His offence is not described. He is the first individual in the Bible of whom it is said that the LORD killed him.

“Marry her” is yabbem, the verb of levirate marriage, in which a brother takes a dead man’s widow to give him an heir. This is its first appearance; the practice is made law in Deuteronomy 25:5–10 and lies behind Boaz and Ruth.

The Hebrew grammar makes his act a habit: “whenever he went in unto his brother’s wife”. The first son of a levirate marriage would carry Er’s name and inherit Er’s share as firstborn, so an heir for Er would shrink Onan’s own inheritance. That is an inference from the later law, but a widely held one.

The same words that judged Er are used for Onan: it was evil in the eyes of the LORD. “Also” links the two deaths, and it is the word Judah will seize on in the next verse, “lest peradventure he die also”.

A childless widow went back to her father’s house, as a priest’s daughter returns “as in her youth” (Leviticus 22:13). Judah’s spoken reason and his real one differ, and the verse gives both. The Talmud later discusses a woman whose husbands keep dying as a danger to marry; Judah may have seen Tamar that way.

“Judah was comforted” sets him beside his father, who “refused to be comforted” in 37:35. Sheep-shearing was a time of feasting and drink, as at Nabal’s shearing (1 Samuel 25:2–8) and Absalom’s, where Amnon was killed (2 Samuel 13:23–29). Timnath lies in the hills above Adullam.

Someone tells Tamar where Judah is going. Near the end of the chapter someone will tell Judah about Tamar (verse 24). The whole affair moves on reports passed along by unnamed people.

“An open place” is petach enayim, literally “the opening of the eyes”, most likely a place called Enaim, like Enam in the lowland (Joshua 15:34). “Vail” is the word used of Rebekah covering herself before Isaac (24:65). The verse says what Tamar saw, the same verb as Judah’s seeing in verse 2.

A veil did not by itself mark a prostitute; a Middle Assyrian law actually forbids harlots to veil, since the veil belonged to married women. What made her look like one was a woman alone, covered, by the road at a festival. The covered face also meant that Judah never saw it.

“Go to” is the KJV’s idiom for “come now”, the Hebrew hava that the builders of Babel used in 11:3. Genesis stops to explain, in brackets, that he did not know her. Tamar’s first words in the chapter are a question of price.

“Pledge” is eravon, a word found only in this chapter of the Old Testament. It passed into Greek as arrabon, a deposit or down payment, and Paul uses that word for the Spirit given as “the earnest” in our hearts (2 Corinthians 1:22).

The signet was probably a cylinder seal hung round the neck on a cord, which the KJV calls “bracelets”; rolled across wet clay, it left a design unique to its owner. A staff also often bore its owner’s mark. Judah hands over his signature, his cord and his walking stick for one goat.

Four verbs in quick succession: she arose, went, laid aside the veil, put on the widow’s garments. The garments are the ones Judah condemned her to wear in verse 11, and she goes back into them as if nothing had happened.

The word “hand” frames the errand: the kid goes “by the hand of his friend” to take the pledge “from the woman’s hand”. Judah does not go himself. Hirah, the one man who knows, is now part of the matter.

Hirah asks for a qedeshah, a “consecrated woman”, not the plain zonah, harlot, of verse 15, a more respectable word for the same thing. Deuteronomy 23:17 forbids the qedeshah in Israel. Whether such women served in Canaanite temples is debated by modern scholars.

Hirah reports the locals’ answer word for word: “there was no harlot in this place.” It is true in a way none of them knows, since the woman by the road was none of the things they supposed.

“Let her take it to her” means let her keep it. “Lest we be shamed” is literally “lest we become a contempt”, a laughingstock. Judah writes off his seal, cord and staff rather than keep asking a town where the harlot went.

Three months is about when a pregnancy begins to show. As a widow promised to Shelah, Tamar was treated as bound to Judah’s house. Burning is the penalty the later law sets for a priest’s daughter who plays the harlot (Leviticus 21:9); stoning was the usual sentence (Deuteronomy 22:21).

The Hebrew has her sending the message while she is being brought out to die. She never names Judah; she names only “the man, whose these are”. The Talmud drew from this that it is better to be cast into a fiery furnace than to shame another in public (Sotah 10b).

“She hath been more righteous than I” is tsadqah mimmenni. King Saul will say the same to David in the cave at En-gedi: “Thou art more righteous than I” (1 Samuel 24:17). Judah gives his reason in the same breath: he did not give her Shelah.

The wording follows Rebekah’s delivery almost exactly: “behold, there were twins in her womb” (25:24). Like Esau and Jacob, these two will contend for first place at the moment of birth.

The thread is shani, crimson, the costly dye. At Jacob’s birth a hand came out gripping Esau’s heel (25:26); here a hand comes out first and is marked. The midwife’s “This came out first” is the only claim anyone makes for him, and it is overturned in the next verse.

Pharez, Perets, means breach or breaking out. David uses the same root when he names Baal-perazim: “The LORD hath broken forth upon mine enemies” (2 Samuel 5:20). Pharez stands at the head of the line that ends with David in Ruth 4:18–22.

Zarah, Zerach, means rising or shining, as of the dawn, perhaps matching the crimson thread. Achan who hid the spoil at Jericho was of the family of Zerah (Joshua 7:1), and the wise men Ethan and Heman came from his line as well (1 Chronicles 2:6).