“About three months later, Judah was told, “Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has acted like a prostitute. And now, because of this, she’s pregnant.” “Bring her out, and let her be burned!” Judah demanded. But as they were taking her out to kill her, she sent this message to her father-in-law: “The man who owns these things made me pregnant. Look closely. Whose seal and cord and walking stick are these?” Judah recognized them immediately and said, “She is more righteous than I am, because I didn’t arrange for her to marry my son Shelah.” And Judah never slept with Tamar again.”
Genesis 38:24-26 NLT
Tamar is a heroic character. She bets it all on the character of Judah. And not merely her life is lost if Judah proved to be a coward, but she’d endure the horrific reality of being burned to death. I mean, she’s really gambling here. She could have just let the whole thing go…tried to move on with her life. Instead, she most likely knows the covenant promise to Jacob’s seed is real even though her previous husbands have both been uniquely evil men. So evil that God executed them. (And you think your family has problems!)
So, instead of moving on and accepting her fate as a childless twice-widowed woman, and the desperation and poverty that assures in the ancient near-east, she sought to hold Judah’s feet to the fire, so to speak. Tamar knew what she was owed. She had not rejected the levirate tradition and expected Judah to honor it by having Shelah marry her. Perhaps Judah thought it best to avoid the whole thing considering the terrible fate of Tamar’s last two husbands. Who wants to lose yet another child? This seems to be Judah’s pattern: hoping tough decisions and confrontations could be avoided.
To be fair, we don’t know exactly what Judah is thinking here. What we see is the pattern.
Weak men vacillate. They let the circumstances of life move them. In fact, all of us sometimes mistake passivity for patience. We fail to muster the courage to stand up when we should. We grow intimidated by something that requires faith to face.
In Judah’s case we know that he’s been living a lie. Joseph is in slavery in Egypt. We recall that the original plan of the brothers was to murder him but that Judah had said, in effect, “if we kill him we’ll have to cover it up. Why not just sell him? He’s our flesh and blood, after all.”
So much for secular man’s reasoning.
We often times appease sin in our lives under the guise of pragmatism. Or, in Judah’s case, to avoid conflict with those who are close to us. In all, our fidelity to Christ must never be challenged even by mother or father, husband or wife.
Anyway, the brothers still had to cover up the fact that they sold Joseph into slavery, lying to their father that he’d been killed by a wild animal. The depravity of this lie – to look your own father in the eye and tell him that his beloved son was dead – shouldn’t be overlooked or downplayed. The devastation this must have caused poor Jacob! What a lie and a conspiracy!
Make no mistake: all sin is public; it’s never private in the way we tell ourselves, because it spills out and touches our relationships with others in ways we can’t control.
This is all running in the background here.
As we’ve written before, Genesis 38 is often said to be the “Judah interlude” in that it strangely interrupts the powerful narrative of Joseph. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t need an editor. He’s not writing to appeal to us, but to instruct and save us. Judah is a weak man because sin has made him such. Where are we in this? What sin have we committed against a brother or sister, what slander or lie have we told against the character of another? What battle have we run from and what evil have we appeased because we didn’t have the faith to trust God with the fallout?
Tamar is willing to risk burning to death because she has faith. Judah is the father of the child in her womb and she was owed this child according to the levirate obligation. It was Judah who took a Canaanite wife in a land he shouldn’t have been in.
Judah is running from responsibility; Tamar is the hero facing, through faith, the potential fire of doing the right thing.
So many a powerful man has been brought low by a small compromise here and there! To seek a truce with a sin is to seek ease at the expense of the Lord. To think we can stand idly by when a sin is committed is the path of a traitor and a coward. Only in faith does any man or woman stand with God because to go against the gang, the party, the friends, or family that are set on a sinful path will bring pain. Judah didn’t want to face that hard path and now he’s in a new place with the same problem.
One can say that Judah, in leaving the home of his father and brothers, was doing a hard thing. It’s a hard thing to move sometimes, yes. But how many of us move and move and move so as to avoid waiting on God in a place He wants us? How many travel or change jobs, even careers, as if distance is one’s redeemer from a sin we won’t face?
We must know that God is righteous and that His love is never devoid of holiness. It’s a dangerous gambit to be lazy in our sanctification. The Lord will not allow a man to stay as he is. This episode of Judah and Tamar shows the mercy and rule of Christ in our lives so that we’re conformed to the image of our Savior. Tamar, the weak and vulnerable widow is truly the strong one; Judah the man, is, before the Lord, the one who’s weak. Tamar is pregnant because he paid to have sex with what he thought was a shrine prostitute. Now she’s found out to be pregnant and unmarried, so she’s going to be executed as per the ghastly local custom. Judah finds out the truth. It probably occurs to him that he should have provided his son for her, but this is, in a coward’s way of thinking, a decent enough solution to the Tamar issue. Let her die. Out of sight out of mind is never God’s way of dealing with sin…especially if we’ve sinned against someone.
But if she’s dead he can put this whole thing behind him – just like he did by leaving his home in the first place. Instead of settling up and confessing his sin to his father, he left home. Now, instead of fulfilling his obligation to Tamar, he thinks he can get away with it again. It’s his pattern. Avoidance is not a virtue when action is required.
We must learn to read a history in Scripture like this and search our hearts! What is it that the Spirit is prompting us with in this case? Is there a sin, a weakness, a confrontation we’ve avoided that we know He wants – demands – us to fix? The Lord doesn’t give us the “interlude” because of bad editing but because it’s insight into how the way of the sinner is hard, hard, hard (Proverbs 13:15). Judah has no peace because he’s not living in faith and faith is the thing! What would we gain if our business or employment yielded some smashing success but we have some great sin still unforgiven because we haven’t repented?
Look!
The seal, cord and walking stick are brought forward by Tamar as evidence that Judah is the father of her child. She’s on her way to be burned to death. Judah is self-righteous in his judgment of the poor, dear widow he knows he abandoned. Much like David with Nathan, Tamar produces the evidence that he is the sinner, not her. God will confront us with our sin. We must know this. We must not think the Almighty is all grace, grace, grace, and will allow sin to go unanswered. It is atoned for only through the cross of Christ but those of us who are saved must not presume that we can continue in patterns of sin and unfaithfulness without consequence. He disciplines those He loves.
And, yes, the Lord loves Judah so much that he causes the events to unfold so that His wayward child is publicly humiliated lest he be lost to the eternal shame of hell. It is often like this in the lives of God’s people: we find our greatest triumphs – spiritually, that is – in those moments where we were brought low by Him so as to see at last what needed to change within us.
So, all in the land now knew Judah’s shame. Sure, he does the right thing and repents by publicly stating that she is righteous and that he should have married her to his surviving son. This was done publicly because God is not mocked. It is harsh and embarrassing, yes, but still, we must know, an incredible mercy because if God doesn’t discipline you it means that He’s given you over to your sin. And that means that judgment will come in the next age!
Judah learns a valuable lesson of the danger of sin and we, the reader, learn that too…through him…if we’re wise. Our sins of omission and commission will find us if we don’t repent. Judah tries to forget his sin rather than repent of it. The results are catastrophic. Do we do that too? Here are a few ways we can tell where our hearts are.
First, as noted before over against Abram (Genesis 13), there’s no record of God leading Judah to life in Canaan with a pagan wife. It would be an odd thing anyway, but there’s no mention of Judah seeking the Lord’s counsel, nor that of Godly men in his decision. A great sign of a man going the wrong way in life is that he has and seeks no fellowship with the Lord and the Lord’s men.
Notice how Judah was separated from God’s covenant people. Because of unrepentant sin we blow apart our families and relationships – especially within the church. Judah shouldn’t have been so isolated in a sinful land to start with. Then, he shouldn’t have left Tamar to fend for herself. A great sign of sin in our lives is lack of Godly loyalty.
People who name the name of Christ should never, never be flippant about conflict. To leave a church or to destroy a relationship with another believer requires fidelity to the biblical model for such. Sin is antinomian; it’s lawless. And a great sign of lawlessness in our hearts – that is, unrepentant sin – is the refusal to follow the Lord’s commandment of Matthew 18:15-20. If your brother sins against you, or if your church has gone astray, the Bible provides for a means of resolution (and, if necessary, separation). American Christians and her churches routinely ignore this and wonder why we aren’t salt and light.
A Christian who has strife with another believer especially, or anyone in the lesser degree, especially if it leads to estrangement, must be reminded that only God is God. It is His law that must be upheld, not our own and His law is perfect, reviving the soul. We must never, never put our law or feelings ahead of His; if it isn’t sin, and if we didn’t follow the biblical mandate for resolution and restoration, we must repent. The problem is us, not them. As we see here, God will not simply ignore the pain we cause others – especially those inside the church.
This lack of faithfulness is what leads to bitterness, strife, and alienation, rather than grace and togetherness. Even after Peter had denied the Lord three times, he stayed with the rest of the group. Judas went to the Pharisees! If we can’t get along with God’s people and, therefore, isolate ourselves, we’re on dangerous ground.
Second, this lack of relationship with God and His people leads us into greater and greater sin. Make no mistake, there is a good church for you. Your problem is likely not a church, but sinful and stubborn pride. Judah and his brothers obviously took pride in being God’s people, in possession of the patriarchal blessing. Today, many Christians are similarly arrogant. They think a church is “their church” rather than the Lord’s. They look contemptuously upon others all while being less loyal and honorable than even unbelievers (Romans 2:23-24)! Judah’s behavior with Tamar is a warning to us. We should and must search our hearts!
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
Psalm 139:23-24 ESV
A common error of the day is to say we have faith while yet walking in the futility of our ways (Proverbs 14:12). The path to true life isn’t in Canaan. We can’t run from sin anymore than a man with a disease can move to another city and be healed. Nor can we “move on” and “do something else” after we’ve burned through a church, a marriage, or a friendship. If we’ve sinned against a brother we must repent. The Lord will not allow His children to live as though sin is cheap. The resurrection life is ours now but unrepentant sin will cling to us no matter where we go.
Judah and his brothers will learn many hard lessons before too long. This episode shows us that even in his egregious sin, God’s grace is still upon him, and he publicly repents before Tamar and all involved. Want to avoid the public knowing your shame? Then learn carefully to be humble today before the Lord, confessing your sin, keeping a short account, or be warned. Unrepentant sin will be hung out to dry for all to see (think of David’s sin with Bathsheba) if that’s what it takes for the Lord to teach you.
One wonders what other movements within the heart were impacting Judah’s brothers at this point and if those precision slices of the Spirit’s sword, His sweet corrections, drawing not blood, but draining the puss of our sin-induced sores, were preparing the way for the glorious encounter to come in Egypt with their brother, Joseph. Yes, we wonder at the work of the Lord.
Suffice it to say that we have all sinned against Him…and against others too. Let us be humble, therefore, and repent. If we have the Spirit-led courage to look we’ll find that we’re led to hard moments that the Lord has orchestrated in our lives. We’ll see, like here with Judah, that sins we’ve been trying to cover and forget, the Lord beckons us to face and repent. He writes a great and beautiful story upon our hearts. He writes the dramas and the romance in and through us. In Him there’s no regret, just the glorious peace and gratitude that comes when we come to Him with our sin!
Judah and Tamar is a powerful story. But so is yours…if you let Him who loves you do His grand and magnificent work. Humble yourself and He will lift you up (James 4:10). The hill Christians must learn to die on is Calvary, not some pestilential little molehill of our own.
So, who have you harmed? Who have you gossiped against? What have you coveted? What sin have you stuffed down as if forgetting is repentance? Take them to Him and go and be reconciled (Matthew 5:24). Now. Don’t wait. Please…so much more than we can ever fathom depends upon it. And remember, now is the day of salvation. The passage of time is not sanctification. Walking with the Lord humbly is!
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