Genesis 38 is quite a sordid
chapter. It tells of how Judah’s
family life goes after he sold Joseph into Egypt. We see a number of things that are pretty disturbing.
First, Judah separates from
his family and marries a Canaanite girl.
This is marrying out of the covenant. Then, Judah’s son Er was wicked and was killed by God (we
are told) after marrying Tamar (another Canaanite girl). Then, when Tamar is
given to Judah’s second son Onan in Levirate marriage, Onan refrains from
impregnating her, thus displaying selfishness, and is killed by God (we are
told). After this, Judah’s wife
dies. (v12)
So far we can see that Judah
has lost 3 out of 4 people in his family, which must have been very
painful. It would show him the
pain and grief he had caused his father Jacob by selling Joseph and making his
father think Joseph was dead.
I also can’t help but wonder
if Tamar had some kind of sexually transmitted disease that she passed on to
Judah’s two sons and which killed them.
Judah may have thought the same thing, since he was reluctant to give
her in Levirate marriage to his third son—“for he said, Lest peradventure he
die also, as his brethren did.”
So Tamar takes matters into
her own hands in a way that makes us all cringe. She plants herself in Judah’s way dressed as a harlot. It makes me wonder if she had some idea
that he was easy to seduce. And
Judah propositions her as soon as he sees her, so it seems her estimation of
him was correct.
When Judah sends his payment
to Tamar, he sends it by his friend.
It is as if he doesn’t want to be seen paying a harlot. When his friend comes back, unable to
find the harlot to give payment to, Judah is worried he will be shamed for not
paying as he promised. Clearly his
priorities are messed up; he’s concerned about paying a debt when he should be
concerned about having broken the law of chastity.
When Judah finds out Tamar
is pregnant by whoredom we see his hypocrisy again—he hits the ceiling and
demands Tamar be burned for her whoredom.
It is then that his hypocrisy is revealed to all the people when Tamar
waves his pledges under his nose and reveals Judah was the father. (We don’t know if she presses for the
pledged payment or not..)
It is interesting Judah says
Tamar has been more righteous than him.
I suppose if he hadn’t exonerated her, he would have to be burned
too. Tamar was more righteous in
that she had only been trying to do her part to raise up seed to her first
husband. She kept it in the family,
albeit in a .. wrongheaded way. But
Judah knew he was committing whoredom.
It is easy to wonder just
why this whole story was put in the Bible. However it gains meaning when we read Genesis 39 about
Joseph in Egypt. The contrast is
like night and day. Joseph, unlike
skirt-chasing Judah, flees from temptation. He is propositioned and he refuses. He manages to keep his purity even when
he is the slave of a very sexually aggressive woman. Judah is the contrast by which we can better appreciate Joseph’s
purity.
This isn’t the end of
the story, however.
All Judah’s painful
experience eventually brings him back to his family, though we don’t know
exactly when. And in the midst of
the unusual difficultes of getting food from a strangely surly Egyptian ruler
(Joseph), we see that Judah’s attitude has changed.
To convince Jacob to let Benjamin go to
Egypt according to Joseph’s command, Judah says, “Send the lad with me, and we
will arise and go; that we may live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also
our little ones. I will be surety
for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I bring him not unto thee, and
set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever:” (Genesis 48:8-9)
Here Judah becomes a type of Christ and
we learn a certain particular truth about Christ’s mission that perhaps we may
not have recognized before—that Jesus would bear the blame forever if He had
not done all He could to fulfill His mission. In short, it is His responsibility to bring us back to God
in the resurrection to stand before God so we can be judged. And because He fulfilled His mission of
atoning for us and being resurrected, we can be sure we will stand before God
to be judged. It is also possible
that He is duty-bound to do everything He possibly can (short of coercion) to
get us to accept His salvation.
We also see Judah become a type of
Christ in another thing. When
Joseph’s silver cup was found in Benjamin’s bag of food and it seemed as if
Joseph would keep Benjamin as a slave in Egypt, Judah pled for Benjamin’s sake:
32 For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever.
Judah offered himself
in Bejamin’s stead so that Benjamin could return to father Jacob—a type of
Christ’s sacrificing Himself for all of us to bring us back to Heavenly
Father. Judah could not have made
that offer without having had a drastically changed heart and being converted,
especially considering all the things he had done wrong earlier. He was determined not to repeat his
offense and give more pain to his father.
We also see from
Judah’s words a glimpse of the Christ’s feelings and how He knows it would
affect Heavenly Father to lose His children forever without the plan of
salvation—“How shall I go up to my Father and none of my brothers and sisters
return with me? How can I stand to
see the grief that shall come upon my Father then?”
While Judah’s story
in Genesis 38 demonstrates how bad choices lead to more bad choices, we also
see later in Judah’s readiness to self-sacrifice that there is still the possibility
of redemption and change, to the point that one can become a type of
Christ.
For more insights on Genesis 38, you can check out Ben Spackman's article "The Story of Judah and Tamar."
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