“What Were You Thinking Judah?

Genesis 38:1-30

 

Okay, we have encountered some interesting stories so far in our reading of the book of Genesis, but this one really does make you wonder, 

“What is this doing here?”

Well, I have an answer.

It’s a riddle.

The answer to the riddle lies in its connection to the story before it and what comes after it. Whenever we read something that makes us wonder, “What on earth?” We should be prompted to begin meditating on it. We have learned so far that meditation in the Biblical sense means slowing down and recognizing shared words and images with the narratives on either side of it. 

In order to see how the pieces of the riddle go together it’s helpful to take in the shape of the whole story and to focus on the literary design. Let’s begin with the scandal which the story is all about. There are three main parts to this story. Each of the three main parts, also has three parts, creating a network of symmetrical relationships between paired words. 

 

It begins with Judah going down from his brothers. 

He marries a Canaanite woman. We aren’t even given her name. She was the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. 

His wife gives birth to three sons. Oh, and we are told these all take place at Kezib, which in Hebrew means, “Deception.” 

Judah takes a wife for his first born son, her name was Tamar, which means Palm Tree. Notice the language “He took and gave.” 

It turns out Judah’s first son was evil in the eyes of Yahweh, so Yahweh puts him to death.  No back story, nothing. Yahweh is the giver of life and when He deems fit, He will de-create life. 

Judah goes to the second son, Onan and says, verse 8, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 

Onan knew that the child would not be his own, verse 9, “so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother.” This too was seen as evil in the eyes of Yahweh, so he too was put to death.

 

Tamar, becomes a widow two times over. 

Leaving the last son for her to marry.

Judah deceives his daughter-in-law, Tamar, by saying,

 “Live as a widow in your father’s household until my son Shelah grows up.”

Tamar went and sat in her father’s house. 

Judah never offers his third son to Tamar. The narrator tells us it was because, verse 11,

 “(Judah) thought, “He may die too, just like his brothers.”

 

There is the opening. 

It begins and ends with a Canaanite wife, the birth of the sons, and the death of two sons. Do you notice the Genesis 3 echoes in this section? A story of moral failure. One sees what they want, they take it, consume it for themselves, whether it is through food or through sex, it’s still deception. There is a birth of three sons, the same number of sons for Adam and Eve. They two lost two of three sons. One was lost to murder, the other one lost to exile. Then there is Yahweh bringing death because someone does what is good in their own eyes that is evil in the eyes of Yahweh. 

In Genesis 3 it was Adam and Eve embracing their own death by doing what was right in their eyes. The twist in this story is that the sons who imitate the father are the ones to die, not the father. What we want to know is more of the back story of the two sons. Yet, what the narrator is interested in showing is how this whole family is replaying the failure of Adam and Eve and that leads to death. The central theme is the raising up the seed of the lost son. It’s that theme that will connect us with hyperlinks all through the Hebrew Bible. The brother marrying his brother’s widow is found in the story of Ruth and it is put in a law in the book of Deuteronomy. This all occurs because of death. In this story, the brothers die because they do what is evil in the eyes of Yahweh. They redo an “Adam and Eve.” After the first son dies, the second son is called to be the keeper of his brother’s family, another “Cain.” 

Out of selfishness, he doesn’t want to take the responsibility of being his brother’s keeper. Yahweh banishes him to death, like Cain. We are replaying Genesis 2 through 4, leading to the near death of the entire family. 

 

A family in crisis, then just like in the lineage of Adam and Eve, there was a third son, a “Seth.” In addition, this story presents a tree, Tamar, whose name in Hebrew means, “Palm Tree.” A tree, that instead of bringing death, as it did for Adam and Eve, in this case, brings life. What a riddle this story is. 

 

If this story is supposed to be a moral lesson telling us how not to be like Judah, or his sons, you would expect a different emphasis. We would be given exactly what the two sons did so we could learn to not be like them. 

Clearly, that is not the focus. Instead, the focus is on the family’s future and who is going to rescue the family. Turns out it is Palm Tree, not the brother, who you would expect.  

 

Middle part. 

Judah and his buddy Hirah, go to shear their flocks, like they always do in the springtime. A bit of background, shearing of the sheep was “party time” for the shepherds. It was a time of “harvest” and rejoicing where alcohol and partying were part of the festivities. 

Tamar hears about this and decides to counter her father-in-law’s deception with one of her own. 

She puts on a disguise as a sex worker.

Through her deception, she becomes pregnant with the next generation of Judah’s line. She actually rescues the lineage of Judah from destruction and ruin. 

She does so by taking a substitute, or pledge, what we would recognize today as Judah’s credit card, ID and keys. 

Judah is so sex hungry, he’s willing to give them up. 

So when Judah sends his buddy Hirah, with a goat as a substitute pledge to retrieve his credit card, ID and keys, she is nowhere to be found. 

 

The last part of the story. 

Months go by.

Tamar turns up pregnant. 

Judah says, “Make her come out into public and let her be burned.” 

Tamar responds with, “You know, the baby’s dad is the one who owns this wallet, ID and keys.” 

Caught, red handed!

Judah says, “She is more righteous than I am.” And he confesses his deception. 

Turns out Tamar was pregnant with twins.

When the moment of birth comes, she gives birth to two sons. The younger one trying to usurp the place of the older. 

 

That’s the story.

The narrator has purposely placed this story in the center of the Joseph story for a reason. The whole story is about the near death and the near extinction of the lineage of Judah. This echoes themes from the larger story. 

 

Let’s look at how well the story has been woven into the Joseph story. 

 

Chapter 37 ended with, 

“Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.”

 

We are told what happened to Joseph.

 

Then, in the first sentence of chapter 38, 

 

“At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah.”

 

Followed by the first sentence in chapter 39,

“Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt.”

 

We have the language from verse 1 in chapter 39, borrowing from the last sentence of chapter 37. 

And then an analogy between Judah going down and Joseph going down. This is the author’s way of saying, 

“Ok, dear reader, when you have two chapters that begin describing two brothers in the same language, STOP, look for some other connections!"

 

This happens all the time in the movies. It’s called a “match cut.” 

The director edits the film by linking two different shots together with a shared visual, auditory or thematic element. 

 

If you remember the beginning of the movie “Forrest Gump,” Forrest is sitting on a bench talking, he closes his eyes and the film cuts to him as a young boy with his eyes closed and we are transported back to where his life story began. 

 

This literary device splices stories together by connecting the introductions and conclusions together with matching vocabulary. This is a clue for the reader to begin looking for other connections between the stories of the brothers. 

 

Let’s do it. 

 

When you begin to analyze the story given here of Judah, you can actually notice it is a riddle-like form or outline of the entire rest of the Genesis scroll. Another literary technique where one places a smaller version of the whole inside of the thing itself. It’s also done in art where there is a picture inside a picture. 

 

Shakespeare is well known for doing this. The classic example is the Portor scene in Macbeth (Act 2, Scene 3). 

 

Right after Macbeth murders King Duncan, there is a sudden, jarring shift to a comic monologue by a nameless, drunk Porter. In this short scene, he pretends to be the gatekeeper of Hell and imagines three specific, random characters knocking to get in.

None of these characters ever appear in the flesh, and they are never mentioned again, but their short descriptions serve as a direct, brilliant commentary on Macbeth's actions and the play's main themes.

Shakespeare creates an epic story, and within the story he places one random scene about three characters you never hear from again. But what happens in that random scene is a commentary on the whole story. 

 

Let's go back to Judah’s story and see how the stories overlap. 

 

I pointed out the link between both brothers, Joseph and Judah, “go down.”

 

A pivot point in the story is when Judah says to Tamar, verse 17,

“I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” 

This matches the goat that was substituted in the story of Joseph, in a deception for Jacob to believe a wild animal had devoured his son. 

 

In verse 25, Tamar says, 

“See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”

 

In ancient Hebrew it is identical to what the brothers say to their father when they show him the blood stained robe, 

“Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”

 

We are given deceptions and counter-deceptions as parallel to each other. These are meant to show Judah in a critical and unforgiving light. This story is clearly an instance of the deceiver being deceived. Since Judah was the one who proposed selling Joseph into slavery instead of killing him, he can easily be thought of as the leader of the brothers in the deception of their father. 

In this story, Judah is the subject of a principle of retribution taken in by his own piece of attire, just like his father Jacob. 

 

What then turns the tide in this story? And saves the family line from extinction? It’s the counter-deception of the disguised Canaanite daughter-in-law that saves the whole family. This has become a theme of sorts. There are other stories where there are family members who actually doom their own family unto death without knowing it until somebody comes in with disguise to counter-deceive, to bring about the saving of life instead of the destruction of life? Keep this in mind, because the rest of Genesis is full of this theme. 

 

Within this deception we begin to see a bit of a transformation of Judah’s character. 

Notice when Tamar produces the proof of who the father is, Judah’s response was not of denial, or counter-blame. Instead, he immediately owns his wrong and recognizes that Tamar has acted honorably. The next time we encounter Judah he will be offering his life in the place of another.  

 

Check in time. 

 

These stories remind us that there are very few “givens” when it comes to how human beings will act. The dynamics of how parents and their failures will or will not be repeated by their children, and then the ways children and siblings and sisters and wives and all the relationships within a family treat each other are too numerous to predict. 

 

It’s like playing the game of chess. There are more possible unique games of chess than there are atoms in the observable universe. 

 

With all the combinations of brothers, sisters, nephews, parents, grandparents, uncles, mothers, daughters, fathers and sons who work each other over in the language of Genesis 3 & 4, we have a plethora of twists demonstrating the same theme. 

 

The amazing part is, instead of “checkmate” God provides a “substitute.” Somebody comes in with disguise to counter-deceive, to bring about the saving of life instead of the destruction of life? 

 

We have a savior, 

His name is Jesus Christ. 

Amen. 

Let’s pray.