Judah and Tamar
Genesis 38:1-30
Genesis 38 is another one of those chapters in Genesis that is rarely read in public because it records the sinful and shameful deeds of Jacob’s son Judah. As we have seen in our study of Genesis, the Bible does not shirk from telling the whole, raw truth about our fallen human nature. This is the kind of story you expect to hear about on Jerry Springer, not about those who are God’s people. But God saw fit to hang this dirty laundry in full public view. He put it here for our instruction.[1]
We have just begun to trace the steps of the divine providence that led Jacob’s family to their sojourn in Egypt. We will see this accomplished by Joseph as the instrument, through famine as the occasion, and through Divine power as the cause. And in Genesis 38 we can see the need of it.[2] This chapter shows us why Joseph and subsequently all of Israel, in God’s providence, had to be removed from Canaan to Egypt: God’s covenant people were in danger of becoming conformed to the corruption in Canaan. Judah and his actions and attitudes in this chapter are the prime example of what could happen if the covenant people of God begin to live under the influence of an immoral world.
It’s a danger that we certainly face today. Our society from all appearances is racing headlong away from godly virtue and Christian family values into open and shameless immorality. In Jacob’s day, as in our own, one of Satan’s highest priorities is the attack on the home of the people of God. The family was under attack, as the church is today, on two major fronts.[3] The first is in the area of purity and separation. Today our young people are facing incredible pressure to conform to the world around them, to date and marry unbelievers, to accept and celebrate sexual immorality of all kinds, to question their God-given gender, and to forsake the faith they have learned from their family. The second front in Satan’s attack on the family and the church is in the area of unity and brotherly love. An angry and hateful world pits parents against children and brother against brother. Too often that acrimony worms its way into the Christian family and even the church.
Thus, Genesis 38 serves as a warning to us today as well because the dangers described here which threatened God’s purposes for Israel are those which threaten to hinder Christian families and God’s church in our own day. The same God who in His holiness judged Judah’s sons for their evil, is still holy and will condemn the world and discipline His people today. And the same God who providentially overruled the sins of men to bring about the fulfillment of His purposes then is alive and working all things according to the purpose of His will in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Three themes run through this chapter. The first is how easily corruption can creep into God’s people. The second theme is the holiness of God in judging sin. The third is the grace of God in spite of our sin.[4]
1. God’s people are in danger of spiritual and moral corruption.
Genesis 38:1-11 describe the growth of Judah’s family and the infection of the Canaanite culture on them. We can observe a progression in Judah’s corruption.
First, moral corruption often begins by distancing from God’s people. Genesis 38:1 says, “It came to pass at that time that Judah departed from his brothers, and visited a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah.” Judah’s troubles began when he decided to move away from the rest of his family and from the influence of his father who knew the LORD. Even though Judah’s brothers were not really a godly group at this point, Judah’s move signified a departure from the covenant people of God.
Judah instead establishes a friendship with Hirah the Adullamite. The events of the chapter as a whole inform us that Hirah was a close friend and a very poor influence on Judah. He turns up three times in the chapter. First, he was Judah’s acquaintance, then he became Judah’s associate, and he ended up by becoming Judah’s accomplice.[5] Wherever Hirah is mentioned there is trouble in store for Judah. The Bible says to us all: “Do not be deceived: ‘Evil company corrupts good habits.’” (1 Cor. 15:33). While we need to build relationships with lost people for the purpose of leading them to Jesus Christ, to do so for the purpose of companionship will inevitably corrupt us, not convert them. James warns, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4). Corruption often begins when a person makes the choice to distance himself from God’s people and to build friendships with worldly people.
Second, spiritual corruption often takes hold through marriage outside of God’s people. Genesis 38:2 says, “And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he married her and went in to her.” Abraham and Isaac made it clear that their sons should not marry Canaanite women. Judah is acting more like godless Esau than his father Jacob. The emphasis is clearly on the physical, not the spiritual.
For centuries Satan has used intermarriage with ungodly people to corrupt those from godly homes. The Bible is clear that believers are not to be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14) and that we are to be married “only in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39). The sad result of Judah’s marriage to a pagan Canaanite woman was that his sons took after their mother.
The first son was Er (“the watcher”). Genesis 38:7 says that “Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD.” There is a play on words here because the name Er (עֵר)is the word “wicked” or evil spelled backward (Ra, רַע). What evil Er did is unnamed but it was after Judah took a wife for him that “the LORD killed him.” His second son Onan (“strength”) also “displeased the LORD” (Gen. 38:10). He selfishly disobeyed his father and the custom of the day by not providing an heir for his deceased brother. This is called levirate marriage (from the Latin, “levir,” meaning “husband’s brother”). It was a common custom in the ancient Near East which would be later codified in the Mosaic Law (Deut. 25:5‑10). If a man died childless, his brother was to marry the widow and the first son was regarded as the heir of the deceased man. Onan apparently married Tamar, but he did not want to give his brother an heir, so he would interrupt the act of intercourse and spill his seed on the ground (Gen. 38:9). He was not struck dead for practicing birth control, but for his selfishness in not carrying on his brother’s line because he wanted the inheritance for himself. He was guilty of an act of calculated insult to his father, his brother, his wife and to God. He showed his contempt in a blatant, bestial way, and God simply slew him where he stood (Gen. 38:10).
Judah didn’t know why his sons were dropping dead. All he knew is, they married Tamar and died. So he wasn’t about to have his third son marry her. He told her to go back to her father’s house and wait until Shelah was old enough to marry, but he didn’t intend to go through with it (38:11). In Judah’s mind, Tamar was jinxed.
Third, spiritual corruption leads to yielding to corrupt culture. Several years go by (38:12). Shelah is old enough to marry, but it’s obvious to Tamar that Judah isn’t going to keep his word on the matter. Not having children was a disgrace, and as a childless widow, Tamar wouldn’t have been provided for when her parents died. So she concocts a plan to trick Judah into getting her pregnant so that she will be the mother of his heir.
Judah’s wife had died, he had mourned for her, and now it was time for shearing his sheep. Again we find Judah with his friend Hirah. Derek Kidner comments that this was a festive time, “when sexual temptation would be sharpened by the Canaanite cult, which encouraged ritual fornication as fertility magic.”[6] So Tamar took off her widow’s garments, dressed up as a cult prostitute, with a veil, and sat in a conspicuous place where she knew Judah would pass by. She knew her father-in-law well enough to know that he would be a likely candidate for the services such a woman would offer. Sure enough, before long Judah came that way. With the loose morals of the world to guide him, and with a total disregard for the calling of God, he stopped and propositioned Tamar, not knowing, of course, who she was.[7]
Her price was a kid of the goats, something Judah obviously did not have with him. So, Tamar demanded security in lieu of payment and asked for Judah’s “signet and cord, and … staff” (Gen. 38:18). Judah parted with them readily. The signet was his ring, used for impressing his signature into the clay tablets of the time; it represented his person. His “cord” was probably a valued chain of gold; it represented his possessions. His staff marked him out as a shepherd. A shepherd’s staff was often carved with some identifying symbol of its owner. It represented his position. Judah could thus lightly forfeit person, possessions, and position for the sake of a moment of lust.[8]
What strikes me about this story is the way Judah was thoroughly conformed to the corruption of the Canaanite culture. He’s on his way to party with his pagan friend, Hirah, when he sees a prostitute. Without a thought of God, he turns aside to her. His readiness to do this and the calm way he handles the negotiations show that this wasn’t the first time he had done this. Tamar knew this also, or she wouldn’t have dreamed of trying it.
Does it shock you when you hear of Christians, especially Christian leaders, who fall into gross sin? This story warns us that we all are prone to moral corruption. If you think, “I could never commit this kind of sin,” then you don’t know your own flesh. The Bible says, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). It can happen to anyone who drifts away from the Lord and His people. We live in a culture as corrupt as that of Canaan. And our enemy, the devil, is seeking those he may devour in the vices of this corrupt culture. “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry” (1 Cor. 10:14).
2. God’s holiness judges sin and disciplines His people.
God is a holy God. His holiness is often shown in His judgment on sin and discipline of His people. You may wonder, “Why did God strike down Er and Onan for their sin, but not Judah and Tamar?” The answer lies hidden in the inscrutable sovereign purposes of God. For reasons known only to God, He chose to make Er and Onan examples of His judgment, but Judah and Tamar the objects of His sovereign grace. But both cases show that God, in His holiness, judges sinners and disciplines His people. Although Judah wasn’t struck dead, he was disciplined by the Lord. He lost two grown sons. He would later go through the famine in the land and have to bow before his brother, whom he had despised.
But the real toll of Judah’s sin wasn’t in his own lifetime. As I mentioned earlier, this chapter shows the reason for the 400 years of slavery the nation had to go through. Judah’s descendants went through 400 years of hardship, in part, because of his sin. Judah and his brothers got caught up in the sin of the corrupt world in which they lived. God sent them to Egypt where they would be removed from the Canaanite culture. Sin always exacts a toll. We reap what we sow, and our sin is often visited on our children to the third and fourth generation. God is a holy God, and that means He must judge sin and discipline His people so that they will share His holiness.[9]
But just as God’s grace doesn’t eliminate His holiness, so His holiness doesn’t negate His grace.
3. God’s grace shows favor to those who deserve judgment.
We see God’s grace here in that this morally corrupt Canaanite culture was allowed to continue for another 400 years, until “the iniquity of the Amorite” was complete (Gen. 15:16). The Canaanites were enjoying the goodness of the land of promise while Abraham’s descendants were in slavery in Egypt. Canaan and its godless, pleasure‑seeking culture was thriving. That’s always the danger, that during a period of God’s grace, sinners will mistakenly think that things will go on that way forever. They won’t!
But the real beauty of grace in this chapter is revealed in Matthew 1:3, where we learn that Tamar and her son Perez, born through this sordid affair, are included in the genealogy of Jesus. Judah and Tamar were living for themselves and for pleasure. Yet God used them to produce the ancestor of the Messiah. Is it not strange that Christ should trace his ancestry through this illicit son of Judah rather than through Joseph, who is so much like Christ and is so dominant in the final portions of the Book of Genesis?
Robert Candlish writes about Christ,
That in his genealogy he should be mixed up with human sorrow and human sin, is a fitting type of his being, when he comes, a man of sorrows—a friend of publicans and sinners—calling not the righteous but sinners to repentance.[10]
Jesus Christ, the descendant of Judah through Tamar, was born without sin through the virgin birth, so that as the spotless Lamb of God, He could die as the substitute for sinners. Thus, God is able to be both holy and gracious through Christ. He is holy in that all sin is punished. If a person rejects Christ, he bears the penalty for his own sin‑‑ eternal separation from God in the lake of fire. If a person trusts Christ, Christ’s death pays for that person’s sins. God is gracious in extending forgiveness apart from human merit to every sinner who will receive it. There is grace abounding for the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). Jesus promised, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Every sinner will find mercy at the cross.
[1] Cole, Steven, Lesson 65: Conformity With Corruption (Genesis 38:1-30), https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-65-conformity-corruption-genesis-381-30
[2] Thomas, W. H. Griffith. 1946. A Devotional Commentary: Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[3] Deffinbaugh, Robert, 38. The Skeleton in Judah’s Closet (Genesis 38:1-30), https://bible.org/seriespage/skeleton-judah%e2%80%99s-closet-genesis-381-30
[4] I was helped in this outline by Cole.
[5] Phillips, John. 2009. Exploring Genesis: An Expository Commentary. The John Phillips Commentary Series. Kregel Publications; WORDsearch Corp.
[6] Derek Kidner, Genesis [IVP], p. 188 (quoted in Cole).
[7] Deffinbaugh.
[8] Phillips.
[9] Cole (I relied on Cole’s analysis especially in these last two sermon points).
[10] Robert S. Candlish, Studies in Genesis (1868; reprint, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1979), 602. Quoted in Boice, James Montgomery. 1998. Genesis: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
