Genesis 38
Introduction
• Authority of Scripture- "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God ma be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16).
Application: we must listen, understand and obey all of it, not just the easy bits!
• Context of Genesis- Creation, Adam & Fall, Noah & Flood, Tower of Babel, Abraham & God’s promise of future hope, Isaac, Jacob & his twelve sons, Joseph.
Application: it helps our interpretation of the Bible to understand what has happened before the passage we’re reading.
• Joseph main man- why Judah? Joseph a type of Christ in that he was raised up to save his people, sold for pieces of silver, falsely accused and punished though innocent, finally to the benefit of men by interpreting dreams and making provision for the famine.
Judah’s only recommendation thus far is that he agreed with his older brother Reuben not to kill Joseph, but his was only so he could sell him to the Ishmaelites (37:27). Ironic: Judah sold the Christ-like Joseph; the Judah-like Judas sold the son of Judah (Jesus)! Therefore, not a particularly nice character!
So why stick a passage about Judah in the middle of the Joseph narrative? "This chapter vividly contrasts the immoral character of Judah with the moral character of Joseph" (Life Application Bible).
"As a rude interruption of the Joseph story it...creates suspense for the reader, with Joseph’s future in the balance; it puts the faith and chastity of Joseph, soon to be described, in a context which sets off their rarity and it fills out the portrait of the effective leader [Judah] among the ten brothers" (Derek Kidner).
Application: God chooses unsavoury characters like Judah as well as sweet people like Joseph to fulfil his purposes. This means He may even use you or me to do His divine will!
• Three points- 1. Tamar’s curse, 2. Tamar’s cunning plan, 3. Tamar’s blessing.
1. The curse of Tamar? (vs 1-11)
Astonishing marks of this story are (a) the waywardness of men and (b) the skilfulness of God at over-ruling and directing even their misbehaviour to suit His own ends.
• Judah’s first mistake- cutting himself of from the people of God (1)- Judah leaves the sons of Israel and dwells with the Adullamite Hirah, someone "excluded from the citizenship of Israel and a foreigner to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world" (Eph.2:12).
Application 1: the negative effect of non-Christian company- "Bad company corrupts good character" (1 Cor.15:33)
Application 2: the necessity of Christian fellowship- "let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another- and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (Hebrews 10:25).
• Judah’s second mistake- marrying an unbeliever (2). This was the downfall of many great men in the Bible, let alone rather average men like Judah. Esau married two foreign women and "they were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah" (26:35); Samson had no end of trouble with his heathen girlfriends- he was blinded by lust, you might say; Solomon’s wives "turned his hear after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been" (1 Kings 11:4); Nehemiah was so upset about the pagan consequences of the intermarrying of his men that he "rebuked them and called curses down on them. [He] beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. [He] made them take an oath in God’s name" (Nehemiah 13:25) not to marry foreign women.
Application 1: "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God..." (2 Cor.6:14,15).
Application 2: Judah saw..., Samson saw ("I have seen"), David saw Bathsheba having her bath- 1 John 2;15-17 tells us to avoid the "cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does" because these things do not come "from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever".
• Judah’s third mistake- passing on his errors to his son Er (6,7). Startling even terrifying verse 7. Whatever it was Er was doing, this emphasises to us "the steep moral decline in [God’s] chosen family, which only the outstanding piety of Joseph would arrest for a while" (Kidner).
Application 1: God punishes evil, sometimes sooner rather than later. Compare Ananias & Sapphira (Acts 5:10- "at that moment"), Herod (Acts 12:23- "immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died") and Elymas (Acts 13:11- "immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about..."). Parable of the rich fool- "this very night your life will be demanded of you" (Luke 12:20).
Application 2: You can’t rely on a Christian pedigree or parentage- there is no faith by proxy. "The tendency to an immediate plunge from grace, whenever faith is no longer an active force, is evident more than once in Genesis and Judges" (Kidner).
• The duty of the brother-in-law (8-10). It seemed standard practice for a man to attempt to provide a son for his brother’s widow, so this son could have the dead man’s name inheritance and look after his mother in her old age. This was ratified in Deuteronomy 25:6 which stresses that the dead brother’s "name [should] not be blotted out from Israel". Onan clearly took exception to this, possibly because he rather liked the idea of being the firstborn of Judah. Analogy perhaps- Charles, Diana, Andrew. Onan committed, acc. to Kidner, a "studied outrage against his family, his brother’s widow and his own body". It wasn’t just a one-off. ’When’ in verse 9 should be translated ’whenever’, which may explain God’s fatal attack against him.
Application: sometimes our duty to God and our family goes right against our own desires. Romans 12:10, "Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another." How should we behave?
• The curse of Tamar (11). Clearly Judah is getting worried now- two of his three sons are dead, and the common factor is Tamar. So he blows her off with vague promises of having Shelah when he’s a bit older. She goes back to her dad.
Application: we shouldn’t fob people off with promises we don’t mean to keep, as God may force us to keep our word in a far more unpleasant way- James 5:12, "But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation."
2. Tamar’s cunning plan (12-26)
Although men seem to rule the roost throughout the Bible, it has to be said that some women are certainly very good at scheming. Rahab, Jael, Delilah, Esther, Rizpah and even Ruth were all highly adept at using the slowness of the men around them to their own advantage. Tamar is no exception. In fact she must be a strong contender for the most devious of all...
• Judah’s fourth mistake- going to a prostitute to deal with his grief and loneliness (12-19). Judah had lost two sons and now his wife He was at a low ebb. He was vulnerable to temptation, especially given that at the time of sheep shearing there would have been a lot of fertility rituals, involving illicit sex. Judah, like many of us, turned to sex for comfort and a substitute for genuine intimacy and love. Tamar, angered by the reneging of the promise of Shelah, took matters into her own hands and disguised herself as a shrine-prostitute. Sensibly, she took his unique signet as a pledge, in order to expose his hypocrisy at a later date. (Reminiscent, perhaps, of Esau selling his birthright for some stew.) And finally Tamar got her wish- pregnancy, though by what a twisted route!
Application 1: the devil disguises himself, often as an "angel of light", and attacks us in our areas of weakness when we are feeling at a low ebb. What must we do to prevent this?
Application 2: Also, we have a tendency to throw great possessions (e.g. our peace with god) away for the sake of short-term kicks (e.g. illicit sex).
• Judah’s fifth mistake- trying to hush it all up, with shocking double standards (20-26). Judah sends Hirah to get back his pledges for him, but Tamar’s done a vanishing act. Judah slaps himself on the head, but thinks best to let sleeping dogs lie. But then, some bad news! Your daughter in law is pregnant via prostitution! She should be killed! Sadly, this is not uncommon in history and literature- men behaving like complete sluts and then condemning women for being half as bad- cf. Angel in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and (Read Life Application explanation- last line leads to next point.)
3. The Blessing of Tamar (27-30)
What a relief! After all that time with no sons at all, like buses, two come along at once! But even with babies there are problems- "the pre-natal struggle, not unlike that of Jacob and Esau, brings a violent chapter to a fitting end, and appropriately launches the tribe of Judah on its career" (Kidner).
Application: God will provide, even when the ways and means seem mysterious and even disturbing.
Summing up
We’ve seen that all the Bible is precious and useful to us, that God speaks perfectly into our everyday situations even through ancient stories of very imperfect people. If he is able to use those flawed individuals like Judah, he is more than able to use weak vessels like us today, for His greater glory.
We’ve also learnt that we should not cut ourselves off from fellow Christians or get too intimate with unbelievers. We need to be careful that we don’t pass on our mistakes to our children, but rather enable them to learn from them. We also must remember that our duty to those around us must always come before our own ambitions and desires. We should never make promises lightly. We need to be on our guard against the temptations that ensue from loneliness and loss, and make sure we keep close to those, unlike the Hirahs of this world, who can both comfort us and keep us accountable. And whilst we should try to assist our brothers and sisters when they fall into sin (Galatians 6:1) we should never, never condemn others for the things we ourselves do- let’s remember the beam and the mote (Matthew 7:1-5).
Closing point
God will have His way. God had chosen Abraham to be the father of many nations, and promised him that from his seed, blessing would come to the Gentiles (that is, the light of Christ). God also chose Israel and Judah, and despite the devil’s best efforts to thwart the line of succession, the Christ would still be born via this route. It is quite amazing that specifically mentioned in Matthew’s Messianic genealogy there are two Canaanite prostitutes (Tamar and Rahab), a Moabite widow (Ruth) and an adulteress (Bathsheba). God has His perfect way and He chooses the most imperfect people to bring it about, so that all the glory may go to Him. Are we, as cracked jars of clay, prepared to be moulded in the Master Potter’s hands, in His service?
2 Corinthians 4:5-7, "For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
Amen!
