In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua’s daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And when Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,” she took off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, “Come, let me come in to you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, “What will you give me, that you may come in to me?” -Genesis 38:12-16
Genesis 38 is a bit of a puzzler —here we have the story of Joseph, essentially, interrupted by a narrative that doesn’t seem to fit the surrounding story, or even the larger story of Israel’s history in going to Egypt. The two sons that come out of this story, Perez and Zerah, don’t play any sort of major role in the rest of the Scriptures, other than being the subject of a rather odd blessing at the end of Ruth.
So why is this here?
Scholars who follow the “higher critical” form of thinking will simply say it’s an insertion by the redactor who put all this text together, and so it doesn’t have to make sense. I don’t know that I would ever argue for God putting something in the Scriptures that simply doesn’t make sense!
The first point to notice is that just after this incident we have the mixup between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. In the one case, Judah actually initiates a sexual encounter and carries it through. In the second, Joseph flees from a sexual encounter. The contrast between Judah’s spiritual state and Joseph’s couldn’t be stronger —and I think that’s one of the points Moses is getting at by including this story. Joseph’s reaction to Potiphar’s wife is all the more astounding in light of his brother’s seeking out sexual gratification with a cult prostitute.
But this brings us to a second point: By the time Genesis is over, it is Judah who is stepping up to the plate. Israel trusts Judah with Benjamen, rather than Reuben, his firstborn, and it’s Judah that offers to take Benjamen’s place in slavery over the incident of the silver cup. It’s important to remember the amount of shame this entire incident with Tamar would have brought on Judah within his family. Not so much his sleeping with a cult prostitute, but having children with his own daughter-in-law, and because he wouldn’t give her his final son to have children by. The shame of this outing caused Judah to rethink his life —he had a “come to Jesus” moment, in more popular terms. This entire story shows us the contrast between Judah before and Judah after.
Finally, there is a sense in which this incident is critical in the larger story —God taking Israel to Egypt— as well. Judah’s turning aside to a cult prostitute shows us just how deeply Jacob’s family has soaked up the local Canaanite culture. They weren’t separating themselves from the world, they were compromising with it. Just like the Church, Jacob’s family was called to be in the world, but not of it. And they were failing.
So God sent them to a land where they were despised as a people (the Egyptians wouldn’t even eat at the same table with them!), to teach them to remain separate, to remain a witness to his calling. Without Egypt, Israel would have simply melted into history as another small piece of the overall Canaanite culture. With Egypt, Israel went from being a family to being a nation.
When you see this small aside in the overall context, you realize it’s not out of place at all. In fact, it’s right in the intersection of three overlapping stories God is telling through the life of Judah and his brothers.
