Judah & Tamar - Genesis 38:1-11

38:1-11 - Chapter 38 seems like a stick thrown into bicycle spokes, because in 37 and 39 we are focused on Joseph and his “adventures.” I spent some time yesterday looking around to see if I could find some other meaning on this chapter and why not only is it here at all but why it’s here specifically in the narrative. I assumed that this is thrown in where it is because it’s telling a chronological story, but I don’t think that’s the case. Long story short, I didn’t find a whole lot of subtle meaning in chapter 38 but there are a few things to note.

Judah, the brother who’s bright idea it was to sell Joseph into slavery instead of letting him starve to death in a pit, leaves his family. I don’t know if it was a temporary journey or if it was a permanent resettlement. In his travels, he comes across a Canaanite woman “and he took her, and went in unto her.” First, marrying outside of the faith is what caused so many problems with Esau, so it seems a little unfair to have it be no big deal only one generation later, just because it’s Jacob’s son. Second, it doesn’t say specifically that he married her, only that he “took” her, so it doesn’t start the story off great in terms of Judah’s respect for women.

This Canaanite woman bares Judah three sons, first Er, then Onan, and finally Shelah. Judah marries his first son to a woman named Tamar, but Er “was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him.” It doesn’t say anything about what Er did that was considered so wicked and the way that this is worded, it makes it sound like God himself came down and strangled Er to death, which I’m confident wasn’t the case. Considering what ancient life expectancy was and how dangerous life was in general, it’s more likely that some freak accident befell Er and the ancient writer of this text used it as an example on obedience to the divine. Er’s wife Tamar is now a widow, and in a precarious position.

Ancient Israel had a practice of the surviving brother taking his dead brother’s widow as a wife and then having children with her and then her children receiving what would have been their dad’s inheritance. This inheritance is what they would use to take care of their mother as she got older, as she was unable to have any money or possessions or wealth of her own. So the problem becomes, because Er and Tamar didn’t have any children and Tamar certainly wasn’t going to be allowed to receive her husband’s portion of the inheritance when Judah died, she was screwed. It kind of seems like having a child with one of the brothers is a “buy in” into the family, whereas without children, she’s just some lady hanging around.

The IM gives background saying, “Ancient custom in the Middle East provided that a brother of a deceased man should marry his widow. Under Moses this custom became law. The purpose of such a marriage was to produce a male heir for the dead man and his perpetuate his name and memory. It was regarded as a great calamity to die without a sin, for then a man’s lineage did not continue and also the man’s property reverted to someone else’s family (through daughters, if he had any, or through other relatives).” Maybe it’s because I don’t care about names or lineage or inheritance or anything like that that I just don’t understand why this was important to people or why men especially think it’s so important to have a son. In my line of work I used to be involved in a lot of “gender reveals” and when I announced “it’s a girl,” so many men would get so angry and have tantrums about it, and I hated it. I don’t understand the desire for boy children over girls, but I sure know what it’s like to be an unwanted female left to fend for herself.

One article I read noted that the marrying off of the widow to the brother was practiced among ancient Israel, but at the time of Judah, the Mosaic law wasn’t written yet, so the custom at that time wasn’t for the brother to take the widow and produce children with her, but the father, meaning that instead of Onan being the one who was supposed to provide children with Tamar, at this point it was Judah who was supposed to take care of her. Whoever was really responsible, Judah tells Onan, his second son, to take Tamar “and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.”

Onan was actually disincentivized to have children with Tamar because at this point, the inheritance was to be split two ways, between himself and Shelah, whereas if he had children with Tamar, then it would have been split three ways and he would have received less inheritance. Interesting to note that there is no mention of Onan having another wife or children, meaning that Tamar was his first and only wife, so any children that they had together would have belonged “legally” to his brother and not only would he have lost out on part of the inheritance, but he wouldn’t have had any children of his own. All of this put together was too much for Onan so he decided “ok I’ll marry and have sex with her but kids ain’t happening,” so his pull out game was strong “and this thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also.”

I understand how this might be interpreted to have an anti-birth control meaning but that’s a really crappy interpretation and I think birth control is one of the most important modern advents. What I take away from this is that Onan was selfish and using Tamar and God didn’t like that. I would also say that I think that Onan’s death by the hand of God was similar to that of his brother Er in that God didn’t come down and beat Onan to death personally, but it was probably a weird death that seemed hard to explain so the writer used it as an example of God’s displeasure at selfishness and shirking responsibility.

The IM comments about Onan, “It may be that Onan, who by virtue of the death of his older brother would have been next in line for the inheritance of Judah, refused to raise up seed through Tamar because the inheritance would have stayed with the elder son’s family. He went through the outward show of taking Tamar to wife but refused to let her have children.” Another thought I just had was that if Tamar was Onan’s first wife, then even if he took a second wife eventually, she would have less legal status and their children, the kids considered “his” legally, would receive less inheritance and be less legitimate as well.

Judah is at a cross roads because morally, he should have Tamar marry Shelah or maybe even given her children himself, but he doesn’t want Shelah to die as well, and he must have just seen Tamar as the common denominator in his sons’ deaths that that they were douchebags or had some weird thing. He tells Tamar to go home to her father’s house and be a widow “till Shelah my son be grown: for he said, Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did.” He sent Tamar back to her father knowing full well that he wasn’t going to have her marry Shelah, and the timing doesn’t add up for me either. Obviously Tamar is older than Shelah, but if he is too young to be married at this point, by the time he’s old enough to be married when Judah refuses, then Tamar would have been past her child bearing years by then. I don’t know, if always just seemed shady to me.