Introductions:
[P&H] In the history of Jacob’s family the two central persons are Judah and Joseph. The former became the leader of his brethren and the ancestor of David; the latter, from his noble character and personal influence on the future destinies of Jacob’s children, is regarded as next in importance. Before recounting Joseph’s fortunes in Egypt, Scripture records the following incident in the life of Judah, so as to draw a contrast between his conduct and that of Joseph in the hour of temptation.
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[EF] Yehuda and Tamar (38): Chapter 28 has been the subject of many discussions, for it seems to be out of place. It interrupts the story of Yosef at a crucial dramatic spot, and is not chronologically fully consistent with it (Yehuda ages considerably; then we return to Yosef as a seventeen-year-old). Some feel that the suspension in the drama helps to raise tension; others argue that this is the only possible place to put an important tradition about the important brother. While these and other arguments may have their merit, one may discern some significant thematic connections as well, both within the context of the Yosef story and of Genesis as a whole
The episode first of all demonstrates the growth of Yehuda as a character who is central to the Yosef novella. Already in Chap. 37 he had demonstrated active leadership, albeit in a questionable cause. There he actually saved Yosef’s life, in contrast to Re’uven’s unsuccessful and ultimately self-centered rescue attempt. As the one who basically assumes responsibility, he will be made to undergo an inner development in the narrative, and again becomes the one to take charge of the youngest son (Binhamin, in Chaps. 43 and 44). The missing piece that begins to explain his nobility in this regard (Chap. 44) is the present chapter. Yehuda here learns what it is to lose sons, and to want desperately to protect his youngest. Although his failure to marry off Tamar to the youngest son leads to public humiliation (twice, actually), his response shows that he immediately accepts blame . “She is in-the-right more than I” (v. 26). Such an interpretation is further confirmed by the restriction of the word “pledge” to here and 43:9. Yehuda has learned what it means to stake oneself for a principle.
Only after we have been informed of Yehuda’s change, can the narrative resume with Chap. 39. True to biblical thinking, redemption may start only after the crime has been punished (e.g. the Samson story, where the hero’s hair begins to grow immediately after his imprisonment).
Actually the chronology works out quite well. We are told via 41:46, 53-54, that about twenty years elapse between the sale of Yosef and his meetings with the brothers in Egypt; this often signifies a period in biblical parlance and could encompass a generation or a bit less. Since Yehuda was quite possibly a father already in Chap. 37, the present story could well end just before the events reported in Chap. 43—in other words, Yehuda reaches full inner maturity just in time.
The other function of this story seems to be to carry out the major theme of Genesis as we have presented it: continuity and discontinuity between the generations. What is at stake here is not merely the line of one of the brothers, but the line which (as the biblical audience must have been fully aware) will lead to royalty—King David was a descendant of Peretz of v.29. This should not be surprising in a book of origins, we noted the possible mention of Jerusalem in 14:18. Apparently a popular early theme, connected as we ahve noted to the power of God in history, continuity/discontinuity is repeated in somewhat similar circumstances to the book of Ruth (which contains the only other mention of “begettings” outside of Genesis and Num. 3:1).
The narrator has woven Chaps. 38 and 37 together with great skill. Again a man is asked to “recognize” objects, again the use of a kid, and again a brother (this time a dead one) is betrayed.
Genesis/Bereshith 38
JUDAH AND TAMAR
that Yehuda went down, away from his brothers
and turned aside to an Adullamite man-his name was Hira.
at that time. An indefinite phrase used sometimes of events which occurred several years earlier or later. In this instance, the marriage took place prior to the sale of Joseph (Ibn Ezra).
went down. From the rocky hills around Hebron to Adullam, in the Lowland, 17 miles S.W. of Jerusalem.
[EF] away from his brothers. More than geography seems to be meant “Yehuda begins to change as a person here, in preparation for Chap. 44. Note that the place Adullam assonates with Arabic (‘adula) “to turn aside.”
[RA] And it happened at this time. The formulaic indication of time is deliberately vague. The entire story of Judah and the sons he begets spans more than twenty years. It reads as though it began after the moment Joseph is sold down to Egypt, but the larger chronology of the Joseph story and the descent into Egypt suggests that the first phase of this story about Judah may considerably antedate Joseph’s enslavement. Many readers have sensed this tale of Judah and Tamar as an “interruption” of the Joseph story, or, at best, as a means of building suspense about Josephs fate in Egypt. In fact, there is an intricate network of connections with what precedes and what follows, as close attention to the details of the text will reveal.
went down. The verb is justified by topography because Judah is coming down from the hill country to the eastern edge of the coastal plain inhabited by the Canaanites. But “going down” is also the verb used to travel to Egypt (compare the end of verse 25 in the preceding chapter), and the next episode, which returns to the Joseph story, will begin with the words, “And Joseph was brought down to Egypt.”
2 There Yehuda saw the daughter of a Canaanite man-his name was Shua,
he took her (as his wife) and came in to her.
Canaanite. Following Esau’s evil example (cf. XXVI,34f), and reaping an abundant harvest of sin and shame. Many commentators, however, take the word in the sense used in Zech. XIV,21, and translate ‘merchant’ (Targum, Rashi, Mendelssohn).
3 She became pregnant and bore a son, and he called his name: Er.
[RA] she…called. The Masoretic Text has “he called,” but the more likely naming of the child by the mother, as in verse 4, is supported by several manuscript traditions.
4 She became pregnant again and bore a son, and she called his name: Onan.5 Once again she bore a son, and she called his name: Shela.
Now he was in Ceziv when she bore him.
[EF] Cesiv: The Hebrew root connotes “lying.”
6 Yehuda took a wife for Er, his firstborn-her name was Tamar.
Judah took. Such was the custom, for the parent to select the son’s bride.
Tamar. lit. ‘a date palm’. The name occurs later in the family of David.
[EF] Tamar: The name means “date palm” 6-7 firstborn: Perhaps parallel to the ineffectual first-born, Re’uven, of the previous chapter.
7 But Er, Yehuda’s firstborn, did ill in the eyes of YHVH, andYHVH caused him to die.
slew him. lit. ’caused him to die’.
[EF] (did) ill: I.e. he was evil, although we are not told specifically how.
[RA] And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the LORD. The nature of his moral failing remains unspecified, but given the insistent pattern of reversal of primogeniture in all these stories, it seems almost sufficient merely to be firstborn in order to incur God’s displeasure: though the firstborn is not necessarily evil, he usually turns out to be obtuse, rash, wild, or otherwise disqualified from carrying on the heritage. It is noteworthy that Judah, who invented the lie that triggered his own father’s mourning for a dead son, is bereaved of two sons in rapid sequence. In contrast to Jacob’s extravagant grief, nothing is said about Judah’s emotional response to the losses.
8 Yehuda said to Onan:Come in to your brother’s wife, do a brother-in-law’s duty by her,
to preserve seed for your brother!
perform the duty of a husband’s brother. This refers to the custom of the levirate marriage, by which a surviving brother-in-law (in Latin, levir) marries the childless widow, see Deut. XXV,5 and cf Ruth IV,5 f. The eldest son of such a marriage inherited the name and property of the deceased.
[EF] a brother-in-law’s duty: It was a well-known practice in biblical times that if a man died without leaving an heir, it was the obligation of his nearest of kin (usually his brother) to marry the widow and sire a son—who would then bear the name of the deceased man (Deut. 25:5-10).
[RA] do your duty as brother-in-law. In the Hebrew, this is a single verb, yabem, referring to the so-called Levirate marriage. The legal obligation of yibum, which was a widespread practice in the ancient Near East, was incurred when a man died leaving his wife childless. His closest brother in order of birth was obliged to become his proxy, “raising up seed” for him by impregnating his widow. The dead brother would thus be provided a kind of biological continuity and the widow would be able to produce progeny, which was a woman’s chief avenue of fulfillment in this culture.
9 But Onan knew that the seed would not be his,so it was, whenever he came in to his brother’s wife, he let it go to ruin on the ground,
so as not to provide seed for his brother.
would not be his. i.e. would not hear his name.
[RA] the seed would not be his. Evidently, Onan is troubled by the role of sexual proxy, which creates a situation in which the child he begets will be legally considered his dead brother’s offspring.
he would waste his seed on the ground. Despite the confusion engendered by the English term “onanism” that derives from this text, the activity referred to is almost certainly coitus interruptus—as Rashi vividly puts it, “threshing within, winnowing without.”
10 What he did was ill in the eyes of YHVH,and he caused him to die as well.
[EF] What he did was ill: Onan dies because he does not fulfill his legal obligation to continue his brother’s line. The later interpretation, that his crime was masturbation (“onanism”), has no basis in this text.
11 Now Yehuda said to Tamar his daughter-in-law:Sit as a widow in your father’s house
until Shela my son has grown up.
For he said to himself:
Otherwise he will die as well, like his brothers!
So Tamar went and stayed in her father’s house.
daughter-in-law. Tamar. The childless widow went back to her father’s house. Judah believed that the deaths of Er and Onan were due to Tamar. He, therefore, fears to have Shelah perform the levirate duty.
[EF] Otherwise he will die: Folk belief often regarded a woman who had outlived two husbands as a bad risk in marriage. The emotion here—a father’s fear of losing a young son—will return as central in 42:36.
[RA] Stay a widow in your father’s house. The childless Tamar is not only neglected but must submit to a form of social disgrace in having to return to her father’s house after having been twice married. Since enough time elapses for Shelah to grow from prepuberty to at least late adolescence (see verse 14), this period of enforced return to the status of an unmarried daughter proves to be a very long one. Amos Funkenstein has observed to me that Tamar remains silent in the face of her father-in-law’s condemnation, saying nothing of Onan’s sexual aberration and leaving Judah to suppose that the death of both sons is somehow her fault. And though he banishes her to her father’s house, she evidently remains under his legal jurisdiction, as his issuing of a death sentence against her (verse 24) indicates.
12 And many days passed.Now Shua’s daughter, Yehuda’s wife, died.
When Yehuda had been comforted,
he went up to his sheep-shearers, he and his friend Hira the Adullamite, to Timna.
Shua’s daughter. Her own name is not known. Some time after the death, Judah found it becoming to attend the Canaanite festivities in connection with the sheep-shearing.
Timnah. A few miles S. of Hebron.
[RA] after the mourning period. The Hebrew says literally, “and Judah was consoled,” a verb that may refer to actual feelings or to the simple end of the prescribed period of mourning. Either way, we pick up the antithetical echo of Jacob’s refusal of consolation at the end of the previous chapter. The death of Judah’s wife and the ensuing mourning set up the condition of sexual neediness that motivates his encounter with Tamar.
sheepshearers. As we know from elsewhere in the Bible, sheepshearing was the occasion for elaborate festivities, with abundant food and drink. In this way, Judah’s going up to join his sheepshearers is itself an indication that he is done with the rites of mourning and is perhaps in a holiday mood. The verb twice used for this journey is to “go up,” the complementary opposite of the going down with which the chapter begins.
13 Tamar was told, saying:Here, your father-in-law is going up to Timna to shear his sheep.
14 She removed her widow’s garments from her,
covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself,
and sat down by the entrance to Enayim/Two-wells, which is on the way to Timna,
for she saw that Shela had grown up, yet she had not been given to him as a wife.
garments of her widowhood. To prevent detection by Judah. She resorts to a disguise and stratagem that must have appeared quite honourable in her Canaanite eyes. She assumes the veil of a votary of Astarte. Her intention was to force Judah himself to perform the levirate duty. In pre-Mosaic times, it seems, every member of the late husband’s family was under that obligation.
[RA] sat by the entrance to Enaim. If, as is quite likely, this place-name means “Twin Wells,” we probably have here a kind of wry allusion to the betrothal type-scene: the bridegroom encountering his future spouse by a well in a foreign land. One wonders whether the two wells might resonate with her two marriages, or with the twins she will bear. In any case, instead of a feast and the conclusion of a betrothal agreement, here we have a brusque goods-for-services business dialogue, followed by sex.
15 When Yehuda saw her, he took her for a whore, for she had covered her face.harlot. In v. 21 she is described as a kedashah; that is, a woman dedicated to impure heathen worship. This repulsive custom was common in ancient Phoenicia and Babylonia and survives in many forms of Hindu worship. No kedashah was permitted in Israel; see Deut. XXIII,18.
16 So he turned aside to her by the road and said:Come-now, pray let m
e come in to you—for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
She said:
What will you give me for coming in to me?
and he turned unto her. He left his path to go to her (Rashi).
[RA] Here, pray, let me come to bed with you. Despite the particle of entreaty na’, “pray,” this is brutally direct: there is no preface of polite greeting to the woman, and the Hebrew idiom, repeatedly used in this story, says literally, “let me come into you.” Judah’s sexual importunacy becomes a background of contrast for Joseph’s sexual restraint in the next chapter.
What will you give me for coming to bed with me? Tamar is careful to speak in character with her role as a roadside whore, but as the events unfold, it becomes clear that she also has an ulterior consideration in mind.
17 He said:I myself will send out a goat kid from the flock.
She said:
Only if you give me a pledge, until you send it.
[RA] a kid from the flock. Though this is plausible enough payment coming from a prosperous pastoralist in a barter culture, it also picks up the motif of the slaughtered kid whose blood was used by Judah and his brothers to deceive Jacob (as Jacob before them used a kid to deceive his father). This connection was aptly perceived a millennium and a half ago in the Midrash Bereishit Rabba. The other material element in the brothers’ deception of their father was a garment; Tamar uses a garment—the whore’s dress and veil—to deceive her father-in-law.
Only if you give a pledge. Tamar is not only bold and enterprising in getting for herself the justice Judah has denied her but also very shrewd: she realizes it is crucial for her to retain evidence of the paternity of the child she may conceive.
18 He said:
What is the pledge that I am to give you?
She said:
Your seal, your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.
He gave them to her and then he came in to her-and she became pregnant by him.
Tamar thus secured a pledge which rendered the identification of the owner absolutely certain. Signet, cord and staff were the insignia of a sheik in Canaan, as of a man of rank among the Babylonians and Egyptians.
cord. Used to suspend the seal.
[EF] seal…cord…staff: Individual objects of identification in the ancient Near East, particularly the seal, which served to sign documents. See Speiser.
[RA] Your seal-and-cord, and the staff in your hand. The seal was a cylinder seal attached to a cord and usually worn around the neck. Rolled over documents incised in clay, it would be the means of affixing a kind of self-notarized signature. It is less clear that the staff had a legal function, though of course in political contexts it is a symbol of authority. Tamar’s stipulated pledge, then, is an extravagant one: taking the instruments of Judah’s legal identity and social standing is something like taking a person’s driver’s license and credit cards in modern society.
he gave them to her and he came to bed with her and she conceived by him. The rapid chain of verbs suggests the pragmatically focused nature of the transaction for both participants. The last of the three verbs reveals that Tamar gets exactly what she has aimed for.
19 She arose and went away,
then she put off her veil from her and clothed herself in her widow’s garments.
20 Now when Yehuda sent the goat kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to fetch the pledge from the woman’s hand,
he could not find her.
[RA] by the hand…the woman’s hand. As elsewhere, the physical concreteness of the terms of the narrative is salient: Hirah brings in his hand a kid in order to take back the pledge from the hand of the roadside whore. Since she remains anonymous for Judah, the narrator is careful to refer to her here as “the woman” rather than by name.
21 He asked the people of her place, saying:Where is that holy-prostitute, the one in Two-wells by the road?
They said:
There has been no holy-prostitute here!
[EF] prostitute: Hebrew kedesha, which in cognate languages may indicate a “holy” official, here seems to describe a woman who is similarly outside the usual constraints of family.
[RA] the place. The Masoretic Text has “her place” but the more plausible “the place,” as in the next verse, is supported by several of the ancient versions.
the cult-harlot. Hirah substitutes the more decorous term qedeshah, a woman who practices ritual prostitution in a fertility cult, for the narrator’s frank zonah, ‘whore.
22 So he returned to Yehuda and said:I could not find her; moreover, the people of the place said:
There has been no holy-prostitute here!
23 Yehuda said:
Let her keep them for herself, lest we become a laughing-stock.
Here, I sent her this kid, but you, you could not find her.
let her take it. Let her keep the pledges, lest, if they search further, he be exposed to shame. Even before, the revelation of a higher ideal of personal conduct at Sinai and the promulgation of the Holiness code (Lev. XIX), some moral turpitude attached to such conduct.
sent this kid. He feels he could do no more.
[RA] Let her take them, lest he be a laughingstock. Let her keep the pledge, and we will keep our mouths shut, lest it become known that I have given such valuable objects for a fleeting pleasure. Abraham ibn Ezra shrewdly observes: “In his great lust, he gave three [precious] things for a trivial thing.”
24 Now it was, after almost three New-moonsthat Yehuda was told, saying:
Tamar your daughter-in-law has played-the-whore,
in fact, she has become pregnant from whoring!
Yehuda said:
Bring her out and let her be burned!
let her be burnt. Judah, as head of the family, has power of life and death; cf. XXXI,32. Tamar was the betrothed of Shelah, and betrothal was considered to be as binding as marriage.
[RA] played the whore . . . conceived by her whoring. The very term that Hirah fastidiously avoided is twice thrust into Judah’s attention, zantah (played the whore) and zenunim (whoring).
And Judah said, “Take her out to be burned.” The precipitous speed of Judah’s judgment, without the slightest reflection or call for evidence, is breathtaking. The peremptory character of the death sentence—and burning was reserved in biblical law only for the most atrocious crimes—is even more evident in the Hebrew, where Judah’s decree consists of only two words, a verb in the imperative (“take-her-out”) followed by “that-she-be-burned,” hotsi’uha wetisaref.
25 (But) as she was being brought out,she sent a message to her father-in-law, saying:
By the man to whom these belong I am pregnant.
And she said:
Pray recognize—
whose seal and cords and staff are these?
by the man. Tamar acts nobly in witholding the name of the betrayer. Judah also shows his better side by confessing his sin. The Rabbis dwell on this act of contrition.
[RA] Out she was taken. There is no pause between the enunciation of the death sentence and the beginning of its interpretation. This speed is highlighted grammatically in the Hebrew by the unusual use of a passive present participle (cognate with “take her out”)–hi muts’eit, literally, “she is-being-taken-out.”
when she sent . . . “Recognize, pray.” Like a trap suddenly springing closed, the connection with the preceding story of the deception of Jacob is now fully realized. In precise correspondence to Judah and his brothers, Tamar “sends” evidence—in this case, true evidence—to argue her case. Like them, she confronts the father figure with the imperative, “Recognize, pray” (haker-na’)—this echo, too, was picked up by the Midrash—and, like his father, Judah is compelled to acknowledge that he recognizes what has been brought to him.
26 Yehuda recognized themand said:
She is in-the-right more than I! For after all, I did not give her to Shela my son! And he did not know her again. Scripture does not hide the sins of its heroes and heroines.
[RA] She is more in the right than I. The verb used, tsadaq, is a legal term: it is she who has presented the convincing evidence. But in the next clause Judah also concedes that he has behaved unjustly toward Tamar, so that in a sense her taking the law into her own hands, however unconventional the act, is vindicated by his words.
27 Now it was, at the time of her birthing, that here: twins were in her body!28 And it was, as she was giving birth, that (one of them) put out a hand;
the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying: This one came out first.
a scarlet thread. To secure his right as the first-born.
[RA]27-30. The twins of course recall Jacob and Esau and the whole chain of paired brothers struggling over the right of the firstborn. Zerah, sticking his hand out first, seems to be the firstborn, but he is overtaken by Perez, who makes a “breach” or “bursts forth” (the meaning of the Hebrew Perets). Tamar seems to address the energetic newborn in a tone of wondering affection in the exclamation she pronounces as preface to naming him. Again, the Masoretic Text has “he called his name,” but the reading of several of the ancient versions, “she called,” makes much better sense. Perez will become the progenitor of the kings of Judah. The name Zerah means “shining,” as in the dawning of the sun, and so is linked with the scarlet thread on his hand. The scarlet in turn associates Zerah with Esau-the-Red, another twin displaced from his initial position as firstborn.
29 But it was, as he pulled back his hand, here, his brother came out! So she said:What a breach you have breached for yourself!
So they called his name: Peretz/Breach. 30 Afterward his brother came out, on whose hand was the scarlet thread.
They called his name: Zerah.