Looking back on Genesis so far, the major theme I notice is that God is tracing a line down through history. He has his reasons, and the human author of this Book often doesn't really know what they are, but the light of hope and salvation gets handed down from one generation to the next, making an arrow pointing to Jesus. Because Adam, Noah, Abraham, and their women are all human, they do not realize that God's plan will occur no matter what, and often they (intentionally or not) either try to "help" or they intentionally put roadblocks in His way. God is a loving God and He has an intense, single-minded desire for us. He went to any lengths required to save us and bring us to Himself, including bringing about good from the morally questionable or outright evil acts of humans. The Holy Spirit moved over history like a mighty wind. These two chapters outline this "nothing stands in God's way" theme in a remarkable way.
The story of Judah and Tamar is the first time we hear of a woman who would be directly mentioned in the genealogies of Jesus. From what I've always learned, the five women who the Evangelists specifically mention (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary) have a lot in common. All five bore sons in remarkable, improbable circumstances, all five were "fallen women" or outcasts, and all five lived lives of incredible faith. These five "turning points" were crucial in the carrying on of the line of Jesus, though they didn't know it. The first was an unloved foreign wife, denied her chance to do her duty to the family she grew to love. The second was also foreign, at the very least an independent business owner but may have been a prostitute, a madam, or both. The third was a foreigner too. The fourth was raped and her husband intentionally killed in battle. The fifth, of course...was a virgin who claimed divine paternity for her unplanned pregnancy. What male at the time of Jesus would have paid even the least attention to these lowest of women? The evangelists, however, inspired by God, saw past this and pointedly included them in Jesus' genealogy where Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, and many other upstanding women were ignored.
When taken at face value, Tamar and Judah both use each other in a tremendously cruel manner. The Judah who saved Joseph's life is gone, mired in guilt and grief, and in an attempt to escape, he has moved away, found a local pagan woman for a wife and made many pagan friends. Judah is (unbeknownst to him) the current lightbearer but is this guy the "holy seed of Abraham"? You wouldn't know it to look at him. He fathers sons, but they are pretty horrible guys. It isn't clear what the first one did, but he was so incredibly wicked that God actually intervened, according to the text, and killed him outright. You have to, by this point, be a fairly blatant sinner for your death to be attributed directly to God smiting you one. One novelization of the story that I read depicted Er as blaspheming horribly just prior to this sudden death. His brother Onan is just a jealous pig who flouts a cherished custom of marrying brother's widow and bearing sons that in essence belong to the dead brother. Onan wants what most guys would want, a chance to marry a girl of his own and bear sons that he can call his. His jealousy of Er, however, leads him to a petty revenge. Many would say that Onan's real crime was of not being open to life in his marriage, and it does seem clear that contraception and masturbation don't come out of this looking very good, but the jealousy factor behind it just makes this "stink to high heaven."
Tamar is handed off like property between these men and seems to have the right, in that time and place, to expect that she will be. When Judah married her to Er, she gained a right to the blessing of children. She had an unquestioned right to expect to bear children for Judah's household, and this seems understood by both sides. Er does wrong by not providing her with children for some reason not really explained in the text. Onan deliberately keeps them back. Finally, Judah selfishly tries to ignore her right to marry Shelah, possibly believing somehow that this girl is a "black widow", bad luck for her husbands. He forgets that, without marrying Shelah, Tamar can't marry anyone else and has no chance of avoiding being alone, penniless, and shunned. Finally, when her anger boils over, she takes up a plot for a fairly cruel, sinful
revenge which works out beautifully for God's purposes, with the birth of Perez and Zerah. Jesus didn't just eat with sinners and the outcast...he was born from them.
Perez and Zerah are just like Jacob and Esau...a younger twin who sneakily triumphs over his brother. The New Covenant, chosen by God, takes over for the Old Testament, the natural heir. Upon their birth, Judah receives something of a new birth of his own.
The next chapter about Joseph in Potiphar's house shows once again how God's plan can triumph over stumbling blocks, this time in an individual life. Joseph isn't the official bearer of the chosen line, but God has a plan for his life anyway. Joseph's close relationship to God leads him to put much more trust in this plan than Judah did, and it pays. Judah's descent into grief, guilt, trickery and a kind of incest even when free and relatively rich, is contrasted with Joseph's rise to importance and wealth despite the "curses" of slavery, isolation, and destitution. Other people trust Joseph almost instinctively with just about their entire lives, despite the risk that he might steal, lie and cheat to buy his freedom from bondage. Nobody trusts Judah with anything despite the fact that he's done fairly well with his own circumstances. Given the chance, Judah sleeps with Tamar, disguised as a prostitute, and he spends more effort making sure he's paid her properly than he does making sure his poor little widowed daughter-in-law is provided for. Joseph, on the other hand, does not give in to temptation, begging, or pleading and accepts quietly being lied about. This second tragedy still cannot stop God from blessing him, and soon even the jailer trusts him with unthinkable power. God promised to be with Abraham and his descendents, and to bless them and make them great. Joseph trusts, and therefore the worst things anyone can do to him cannot stop what God wants for him.
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