No Christmas Without Her: Tamar’s Story

Post Author: Rev. Allie Rosner Bass

In Jesus’ family tree, there are a lot of really obscure names, but there are also some famous people. Matthew’s account starts with Abraham. Luke’s genealogy traces Jesus all the way back to Adam. Either way, we learn that Jesus has to do with beginnings: God’s creation of the world, and God’s choosing of God’s people. Further down the line there is King David, linking Jesus with God’s promise that a descendant of David will rule Israel forever. This family tree is almost entirely made up of men, but there are five exceptions: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. 

First, there is Tamar. Tamar’s story takes up one chapter, Genesis 38- a brief detour from the longer story of Joseph. It doesn’t seem to be connected much to anything around it, which is enough for some scholars to question why it’s there at all. Tamar’s story begins when Judah, one of Jacob’s sons and Joseph’s brothers, settles in another place, marries, and has three sons. Judah’s oldest son is named Er, and Judah takes a Tamar as a wife for him. But then, Genesis 38:7 tells us, “Er…was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death.” Not how I believe God generally operates, but so the story goes.

Deuteronomy 25 establishes what ought to happen if a married man dies and doesn’t leave an heir. It’s called “levirate marriage,”, and states that the man’s brother then has to marry the deceased brother’s wife in order to provide an heir for him. It’s unclear how much this was really practiced historically, but the concept is important to Tamar’s story. Once Er dies, it is up to Judah’s middle son Onan to marry Tamar and provide an heir for Er.

Onan doesn’t really love that idea, because after all, if the oldest son doesn’t have any heirs, then Onan himself stands to receive the greatest part of the inheritance. So Onan sleeps with Tamar, but as for providing heirs, he finds a way to get out of it, so to speak. (Check out Genesis 38:8 for a more explicit answer.) So, as the story goes, God puts Onan to death too.

Judah’s first two sons have just died and were connected to Tamar; he was not looking to marry his last son off to the same woman. So Judah tells Tamar, “He’s too young, wait until he’s older, go back to your father’s house until then.” Judah has no real intention of ever letting her marry Shelah, and she probably knows it.

Here’s the problem for Tamar: if you were a woman in the Ancient Near East, you got your social and economic standing through your husband and your sons. Tamar, at this point, has neither, but she also can’t marry anyone else, since technically she is promised to Shelah. She is Judah’s family’s responsibility, and Judah has effectively tossed this vulnerable person aside. But Tamar is unwilling to let her story end there.

After a while Judah’s wife dies. Tamar has an idea of how to take back what is rightfully hers, a place in Judah’s family. So when she hears that Judah is going to be in town, she takes off her widow’s garments and puts on a veil and goes to meet him. He does not recognize her, and promptly propositions her. When it comes to payment, he is empty-handed, so the two negotiate his seal and staff as collateral. When he tries to send the payment and get back what is essentially his ancient ID, this mysterious woman is nowhere to be found. Instead of fretting, Judah essentially says, “Meh, let that unknown woman keep them.” (Genesis 38:23)

About three months later, Judah finds out his daughter-in-law Tamar, who is still technically promised to his son Shelah, is pregnant. Scandal! Judah calls for her death. But just as she is being brought out to her own execution, she holds up Judah’s seal and staff, and says, “Anyone know who these belong to?”

Judah recognizes his items and is convicted because he knows he hasn’t held up his end of the bargain with Tamar. She, though, is prepared to provide an heir for the family and procure some security for herself, no matter what it takes. In due time, she gives birth to twins, who continue on the family tree that eventually leads us to David and then to Jesus.

Can you imagine Mary and Joseph sitting around the dinner table passing this family story on to Jesus?

But here’s where the story packs a punch: when Judah realizes that the person who has gotten Tamar pregnant is himself, he says, “She is more in the right than I.” Or in some translations, “She is more righteous than I am.”

Tamar’s story is a story about redefining righteousness.

Judah is not the most ethical man, but he has some means and standing in the community. Tamar, meanwhile, is a childless widow with no clout who has apparently committed a sexual transgression punishable by death. If we were there, part of their world, who would we see as righteous? 

Maybe that’s hard to answer, because we know how the story turns out. We know who we’re supposed to root for. But have you ever looked at someone askance for their questionable and possibly desperate decision? Maybe the mother buying steak from the grocery store with her food stamps because she wants to make one nice meal for her family? Or protestors disturbing the peace while the rest of us sit complacently and don’t make any waves? These are people we might be tempted to label as “unrighteous,” if we were given to using that kind of religious language in our day to day lives.

That’s not to excuse away any bad decisions a person might make, but sometimes it can be all too easy to judge another person’s actions as “unrighteous” without knowing their whole story – in fact, without even realizing how their story might implicate us.

In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector and their respective prayers in the Temple. “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people,” prayed the Pharisee. Prayed the tax collector: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” One of these men followed the rules and the role society expected of him and one was a sellout to the empire. One spent his life in an attempt to be pure and holy, one was a sinner in search of redemption. Which one went home justified – or “in the right”? Not the one anyone listening would have considered righteous.

Maybe that idea that we need to rethink who and what we call righteous is something Jesus got from his ancestor Tamar.

He was, after all, the one who ate with people who were labeled outcasts and sinners. He saw through the “good” religious people and upstanding citizens and hung out instead with people whose pasts and even presents were questionable. Maybe Jesus saw a new kind of righteousness in them. Maybe their righteousness came from the fact that they knew they needed him and the life he showed them how to live. Maybe it didn’t come from following rules and being “nice” but from the kind love and sacrifice that broke rules and crossed boundaries.

Here, at the beginning of Advent, we wait for the coming of the One who showed us how to judge righteousness through different eyes. Over these next four weeks, when you are tempted to judge and blame someone, let Judah’s words echo in your mind and heart instead: “They might be more in the right than I.”