This lengthy article has been divided across 5 blogs or 5 parts.
Judah
According to Jacob’s Judah oracle (Gen. 49:8–11), Judah would also have leadership over the nations and among his brothers. The promised seed would also come from his line. But this need not be critiqued as contradictory to the Joseph narratives. Instead, dual connections are being laid out.
Many critics regard as misplaced the story of Judah’s incident with his daughter-in-law, Tamar, which follows immediately after the sale of Joseph and his arrival in the Egyptian house of Potiphar. Yet, chapter 38 chronologically follows chapter 37, as clearly indicated in the introductory formula “at that time” (38:1), serving to connect the Judah-Tamar episode to the broader issues of Abraham’s divine promise. It also shares linguistic and thematic parallels with the preceding chapter.
More importantly, both Judah’s and Joseph’s lives demonstrate the same foundational theology: divine providence working through sinful human history—with sinful acts “redeemed” within salvation history. The chiastic structure of Genesis 38 underscores this, its apex highlighting the irregular sexual encounter between Judah and Tamar. This liaison will provide an ancestor of David—and hence of the Messiah, the Savior of the world:
A Judah’s sons and Tamar (Gen. 38:1–11)
B Tamar’s prostitution with Judah (38:12–26)
A Judah’s sons with Tamar (38:27–30)
Each section of the chiasm also includes a reference to time:
A “It came to pass at that time” (Gen. 38:1)
B “in the process of time” (38:12)
B1 “and it came to pass . . . three months after” (38:24)
A1 “and it came to pass, at the time” (38:27)
Judah’s sexual relationship with Tamar is commonly used to defame him. However, this is done without reckoning with Judah’s quoted comment. When Judah learned of Tamar’s pregnancy and condemned her, she returned Judah’s personal possessions to him to identify his involvement. Judah, similar to his descendant, David, then humbly acknowledged his guilt in the situation—pointedly declaring that Tamar was “more righteous” than he (Gen. 28:26, italics supplied). Notably, Judah now does not condemn Tamar’s compromising behavior despite earlier having condemned her to death. Instead, Judah admits his guilt. What makes Tamar “‘more righteous’” is not what she did, her deceptive prostitution, but Judah’s deceit: “‘because I did not give her to Shelah my son.’”
Even more importantly, with his choice of words, “‘more righteous,’” Judah acknowledged that he had been compromising the messianic seed. Though Tamar had set up the seduction, Judah did not now condemn her morally—even insisting that she was “‘more righteous.’” In narrative analysis, it has often been noted that biblical narrative details are drastically minimal, with dialogue quotations often carrying the core issue.
Some ancient rabbis proposed that Tamar had converted to the God of Judah—and this was behind her thinking that Judah was compromising the Messianic line. Thus, she took matters into her own hands, even though in a highly irregular way—and God accepted her seed through Judah.
The fact that Judah never had any further sexual relationships with Tamar indicates that this was a unique and solitary liaison—with the twins, Perez and Zerah, becoming linked into Jacob’s later messianic oracle about Judah.
The narrative of Tamar ends with the birth of her twins. The second son became the first, and part of salvation history in the genealogy of David (Ruth 4:18–22)—and thereby the genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:3). Moreover, in Matthew’s genealogy, Tamar is the first of four women, followed by Rahab (Matt. 1:5), Ruth (vs. 6), and the “wife of Uriah” (vs. 6) who precede Mary the mother of Jesus (vs. 16). It is highly significant that these are the only women of the Old Testament who are mentioned in this genealogy. Matthew doesn’t include the great matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, or Leah. The four women listed in Matthew’s genealogy all had very irregular sexual relationships. This could be seen as preparing the way for Mary, who is also presented as an irregular case, being pregnant and yet unmarried.
The Genesis narrator recorded (46:12), along with the Chronicler (1 Chron. 2:3–4:23), the offspring of Judah: He had five sons, three by his Canaanite wife, Shua (38:2–5; 1 Chron. 2:3); and two by his daughter-in-law, Tamar (38:6, 27–30; 1 Chron. 2:4). This historical record makes clear that despite the atypical events involving Perez’s conception, he became the ancestor of Israel’s greatest king, David (Ruth 4:12, 18)—and thence of the messianic line of Jesus (Matt. 1:3; Luke 3:33). (The birth of Joseph’s children “in Egypt” and the priestly bloodline of his Egyptian wife Asenath [vs. 20] provide the historical detail that many of Jacob’s descendants were born outside Canaan.)
The narrative of Judah and Tamar, along with the sexual irregularities of the three other women in the Messiah’s genealogy, are part of the theology that underlies the Joseph-Judah narrative cycle. Namely, that suspicious, even immoral, situations can be turned into good through God’s sovereign blessing (Gen. 50:20)—taking sinful human acts and redeeming them. He even accepts irregular offspring as legitimate in the Messiah’s family tree. Just as God wrought salvation history through Tamar and Judah’s problematic relationship, He delivered Joseph and, ultimately, spared many lives through Judah’s wrongful sale of Joseph. Perhaps the apostle Paul saw this and was reflecting on it when he wrote: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).
This blog will continue and be completed in Part 5.