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Context No. 236 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 38:12-16: in context

12After many days, Shua’s daughter, the wife of Judah, died. Judah was comforted, and went up to his sheep shearers to Timnah, he and his friend Hirah, the Adullamite. 13Tamar was told, “Behold, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.” 14She took off the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she wasn’t given to him as a wife. 15When Judah saw her, he thought that she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. 16He turned to her by the way, and said, “Please come, let me come in to you,” for he didn’t know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, “What will you give me, that you may come in to me?”

Genesis 38 is a story dropped into the middle of the Joseph account, and it belongs to Judah. Two of his sons had married Tamar and died, and by the custom of the time Judah owed her his third son, Shelah, so she could bear a child and have a place. Instead he held Shelah back, quietly afraid this daughter-in-law was bad luck, and left Tamar stranded, a childless widow with no standing, waiting in her father's house for a marriage that was never going to come.

This passage is what she does about it. Judah's own wife has died, and once his mourning is over he goes up to Timnah to shear his sheep. Tamar hears he is coming, and she sees clearly what Judah has been avoiding: Shelah is grown now, and she still has not been given to him. So she takes off her widow's clothes, covers her face with a veil, and sits at the gate on the road he will travel. Judah passes, takes her for a prostitute because her face is hidden, and propositions his own daughter-in-law without any idea who she is. She answers only with a question of her own: what will you give me?

The scene turns on a man who does not recognize the person he has wronged, even when she is directly in his path. Judah owed Tamar a future and forgot her, and now he cannot see her face. Later he will admit she was more in the right than he was. Who is standing in my road, owed something by me, whom I have arranged not to recognize?

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