Tamar was ‘her own personal Jesus,’ and avoided a fiery death
Genesis 38 tells the story of Tamar, a woman who schemed to get herself pregnant, and to stay alive when convicted of prostitution.
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
— Depeche Mode, Personal Jesus
This is the story of Tamar, a woman who played God and Jesus both, and lived to tell the tale.
When you read Numbers 15, about the stoning of a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath, you wish he had a lawyer. You wish he had an advocate.
That advocate might tell “the whole assembly” of Israelites that to catch the man gathering wood was also a form of work.
Snitching definitely took work. And stoning would require an entire community to break the Sabbath to punish someone who broke the Sabbath.
“Let he among us who has never broken Sabbath throw the first stone,” that advocate might have said.
Genesis 38 tells the story of Judah and Tamar.
Judah, one of Jacob’s 12 sons, found Tamar to be wife to his son Er.
“But Er was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death,” reads Genesis 38:7.
One might say Er acted in err, and paid for the error with his life.
Judah tells his next son, Onan, to fulfill his brother-in-law duty to Tamar, and produce offspring. Tamar would have a child, and it would technically belong to Er.
Onan took the sex but didn’t give his seed. He spilled it on the ground. One imagines he did this with a shocked face. Darn, looks like we’ll have to try again!
Onan’s scheme fails, badly.
“What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so he put him to death also,” reads Genesis 38:10.
The wasteful spilling of seed is known as Onanism to this day.
Jehovah’s Witnesses use the story of Onan as a parable against masturbation, removing the story from its context. Disobedience was Onan’s sin, and the seed was produced in the act of sex. Onan was using sex for pleasure, but it was not self-pleasure.
Judah has lost two sons in 3 verses.
Tamar is still without child, and living as a widow in her father’s house. Judah has a third son, Shelah, who is her only hope.
“He may die too, just like his brothers,” Judah tells Tamar.
When the time is right, when the boy becomes a man, they would be married. The arranged marriage exists to this day in traditional cultures.
But when Shelah grows up, and is of marrying age, that hasn’t happened. So Tamar takes her pregnancy into her own hands.
Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
— Bob Dylan, Jokerman
For Judah, the tragedy continues when his wife dies. He has lost two sons and his wife.
When Judah finally feels up to it, he goes on the road to get his sheep sheered. Tamar hears of Judah’s travels, and sees an opportunity.
Judah, seeing a woman with a covered face, a tell-tale sign of a “woman of shame,” sees an opportunity of his own.
“Come now, let me sleep with you,” Judah says to the woman.
What he doesn’t know, because he can’t see her face, is that the woman is Tamar.
She tired of waiting. Rather than seek out strange bedfellows, she decided to procure family seed By Any Means Necessary.
Judah negotiates with the woman, and says he’ll send a goat from his flock.
As collateral, the woman demands “your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” reads Genesis 38:18.
But when Judah sends the goat, no one can find the woman. No one even knows who she is. She doesn’t fit the description of any of the regular temple prostitutes. Strange.
Three months later, Judah gets word that Tamar was “guilty” of prostitution.
Not a person of interest. Not accused. Not charged. Not on trial. But guilty.
Oh, and she got pregnant in the act.
Genesis 38 does not say who told Judah, or what his role is in the punishment process.
So when Judah says “Bring her out and have her burned to death,” it’s not clear if he has been empowered to name the punishment, or is speaking from family embarrassment.
When Tamar is brought out, she offers no defense — just proof of paternity.
In any act of prostitution, it takes two to tango, but this punishment was all going to fall on the woman. We don’t see that anyone even asked about the man.
Tamar brings it up herself.
“I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” Tamar said in Genesis 38:25, in a message sent to Judah. “See if you recognize whose cord and staff these are.”
Judah has been caught out. He was the second tango partner. He’s just as deserving of the fiery death he was prepared to condemn Tamar to.
Only now does Judah’s tone change, realizing the implications.
“She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah,” Judah says in Genesis 38:26. “And he did not sleep with her again.”
Tamar has twin boys. The bloodline lives on.
John 8 tells the story of an adulterous woman. The community wants to put her to death, by stoning. They say The Law demands it. They ask Jesus what he thinks.
Jesus says, in John 8:8: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Jesus held up a mirror to the Pharisees, his accusers and hers. And rather than throw stones, they ran from what they saw.
Tamar didn’t wait for fate, the gods, or God to get her pregnant. She made a plan and carried it out.
Tamar then had to be her own personal Jesus in a life-or-death moment.
She had to use cunning to show her accuser as not only complicit in sin, not only a participant, but also its root cause, for not marrying her to Shelah.
In ancient times and now, physical evidence is given great weight. Look how quickly Judah’s demeanor changed, when he saw his staff in Tamar’s hand.
His choices were to (a) Join Tamar among the Condemned, and then on the pyre, or (b) re-humanize her, given that he’s not only a sinner, but was an equal partner in that sin. He chooses B, as Tamar knew he would do.
As we learn in the very next chapter, Genesis 39, in the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, appearances can be deceiving.
The same physical evidence that saved Tamar’s life puts Joseph’s at great risk.
In the end, and after many ordeals, Joseph rises to No. 2 under Pharaoh.
What Potiphar’s wife meant for evil, “God meant it for good.”
But that’s a story for another day.