Genesis 38 breaks the Joseph narrative with a bold, complicated, and very broken story. Joseph was sold into slavery, and the very next verse we read is about his brother Judah. Judah was one of Leah\u2019s sons, and Leah was the wife that Jacob didn\u2019t love. Judah was also the patriarch of the lineage of King David and Jesus. So this story, and Judah\u2019s legacy, isn\u2019t as much an interjection as an interlude that gives us a glimpse of God\u2019s grace and the amazing ways His promises were fulfilled despite all sorts of human injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some cultural background helps this story because it\u2019s a rather tangled web of relationships. Levirate marriage was a practice in the ancient Near East that was later written down in Deuteronomy 25 as part of the Mosaic law. Basically, it meant that if a man died before he had a child, his brother had to marry his wife, and their first child would carry on the first (dead) brother\u2019s name and place in the deceased brother\u2019s lineage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Judah had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married a woman named Tamar, and Er was so evil that he died. Onan married Tamar but didn\u2019t want to preserve his brother\u2019s place in the lineage, and because he did not impregnate Tamar, was killed for his sin. Judah had seen both of his sons die after marrying Tamar, so he hid Shelah away and kept him from Tamar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tamar, the widow who had the right to bear Judah\u2019s eldest son\u2019s child and continue the family line, responded. She dressed as a prostitute, tempted Judah, and conceived a child with him without him knowing who she was (Genesis 38:13\u201319). Later, when Judah found out she was pregnant, he threatened to kill her for adultery (against Shelah, whom she was technically betrothed to). When she revealed that Judah was, in fact, the father, he then admitted that he had wronged her. Tamar had twin sons, Perez and Zerah, and Perez continued the family line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a lot of background to unpack in this unlikely story of God\u2019s faithfulness to a family. Judah almost destroyed promises made to his great-grandfather: the blessing of the whole world through the line of Abraham. God had made a promise to Abraham, and He continued that promise to Isaac and to Jacob. At so many turns, the promise appears threatened by someone\u2019s sin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the author of this very complicated story is the author of the ultimate story: The story here makes a way for all of His promises, and we are given the free gift of grace purchased on the cross by Jesus. God can and does redeem the hardest, most impossible, most complicated stories. What a gift it is to be His.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Genesis 38 breaks the Joseph narrative with a bold, complicated, and very broken story. Joseph was sold into slavery, and the very next verse we read is about his brother Judah. Judah was one of Leah\u2019s sons, and Leah was the wife that Jacob didn\u2019t love. Judah was also the patriarch of the lineage of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":71768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genesis25"],"acf":{"hero_background_image":false,"related_plans":[71878],"weekly_truth":false,"grace_day":false,"share_text":"She Reads Truth","devotional_text":"JUDAH AND TAMAR<\/b>
\r\nby Melanie Rainer<\/i>
\r\n
Genesis 38 breaks the Joseph narrative with a bold, complicated, and very broken story. Joseph was sold into slavery, and the very next verse we read is about his brother Judah. Judah was one of Leah\u2019s sons, and Leah was the wife that Jacob didn\u2019t love. Judah was also the patriarch of the lineage of King David and Jesus. So this story, and Judah\u2019s legacy, isn\u2019t as much an interjection as an interlude that gives us a glimpse of God\u2019s grace and the amazing ways His promises were fulfilled despite all sorts of human injustice.<\/p>
\r\n
Some cultural background helps this story because it\u2019s a rather tangled web of relationships. Levirate marriage was a practice in the ancient Near East that was later written down in Deuteronomy 25 as part of the Mosaic law. Basically, it meant that if a man died before he had a child, his brother had to marry his wife, and their first child would carry on the first (dead) brother\u2019s name and place in the deceased brother\u2019s lineage.<\/p>
\r\n
Judah had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married a woman named Tamar, and Er was so evil that he died. Onan married Tamar but didn\u2019t want to preserve his brother\u2019s place in the lineage, and because he did not impregnate Tamar, was killed for his sin. Judah had seen both of his sons die after marrying Tamar, so he hid Shelah away and kept him from Tamar.<\/p>
\r\n
Tamar, the widow who had the right to bear Judah\u2019s eldest son\u2019s child and continue the family line, responded. She dressed as a prostitute, tempted Judah, and conceived a child with him without him knowing who she was (Genesis 38:13\u201319). Later, when Judah found out she was pregnant, he threatened to kill her for adultery (against Shelah, whom she was technically betrothed to). When she revealed that Judah was, in fact, the father, he then admitted that he had wronged her. Tamar had twin sons, Perez and Zerah, and Perez continued the family line.<\/p>
\r\n
There is a lot of background to unpack in this unlikely story of God\u2019s faithfulness to a family. Judah almost destroyed promises made to his great-grandfather: the blessing of the whole world through the line of Abraham. God had made a promise to Abraham, and He continued that promise to Isaac and to Jacob. At so many turns, the promise appears threatened by someone\u2019s sin.<\/p>
\r\n
But the author of this very complicated story is the author of the ultimate story: The story here makes a way for all of His promises, and we are given the free gift of grace purchased on the cross by Jesus. God can and does redeem the hardest, most impossible, most complicated stories. What a gift it is to be His.<\/p>","share_image_height":"640","day_number":"26","scripture":"Genesis 38:1-30, Deuteronomy 25:5-10, 1 Timothy 5:8","available":true,"ad_banner_name":"","ad_banner_image":false,"ad_banner_url":"","songs":"","key_verse":"","key_verse_reference":"","background_image":false,"background_color":"#FBF7F3","scripture_references":false,"share_image":false,"author_name":"","author_bio":"","guest_social_media":false,"show_ad":true,"ad_override":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}