The Audacious Tamar
The story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 forms something of an interlude in the Joseph cycle of the book. Coming immediately after Joseph’s sale into slavery, it precedes his arrival in Egypt. By diverting attention away from Joseph, it gives the reader a sense of the lapse of time required by the rest of the narrative.
Although Judah himself forms the author’s chief point of interest in this chapter, one suspects that many readers find the young widow Tamar more interesting. Just what is to be said of this lady who seduces her father-in-law?
We observe, first, that the Bible is not harsh or judgmental about Tamar’s behavior here; she is simply trying to get what she has coming to her—namely, children. Wily Judah, thinking he has managed to avoid Tamar all those years, now discovers an easy way to get rid of her for good. But she turns the tables on him. There is nothing Judah can do but acknowledge his paternity and get on with life. This story is one of the Bible’s great accounts of a smarter underdog getting back at an oppressor.
Among the rabbinical commentators, Tamar is sometimes treated with an even more enhanced respect. According to one Midrashic source, she had a prophetic gift that enabled her to foresee her motherhood of the house of David; when she journeyed to Timnah to seduce Judah, she was even guided by an angel.
The Church Fathers spoke equally favorably of Tamar, but their assessment followed a somewhat different path: Tamar was not so much a prophetess as a religious searcher. According to John Chrysostom, for instance, she was gifted with spiritual insight regarding God’s salvific promises to the Hebrews, and she longed to be associated with the unfolding of those promises:
She was eager to have children by her father-in-law. When she saw her mother-in-law die and Judah make for Timnah to shear the flocks, she wished to obtain by stealth intercourse with her father-in-law and desired to have children by him, not out of lust—heaven forbid—but to escape being just another nameless individual. As a matter of fact, what happened came by divine design, and as a result her plan was effective.
Equally emphatic is Ephrem the Syrian, who portrays Tamar as praying before going out on her quest. She says to God, “You know that it is for what is concealed in the Hebrews that I thirst. . . . How can I make the Hebrews understand that it is not marriage for which I am hungering, but rather that I am yearning for the blessing that is hidden within them?” Then, says Ephrem:
While Tamar was making supplication to God for these things, behold, Judah came out and saw her. The prayer of Tamar inclined him, contrary to his usual habit, to go to a harlot[!]. When she saw him, she was veiled, for she was afraid. After the word of the sign for which she had asked had been spoken, she knew that God was pleased with what she was doing. Afterward she revealed her face without fear.
It is curious that, many centuries later, the Jewish novelist Thomas Mann also portrayed Tamar as a religious seeker. In the long story, Joseph and His Brothers, Mann pictures young Tamar as sitting at the feet of the aging Jacob while he tells the stories now found in the earlier parts of Genesis, including the accounts of Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, and especially God’s choice of the descendants of Abraham. Mann writes, “She wanted to interpolate herself—and did so with astonishing determination—into the grand story, into the vast play of events, about which she had learned by way of Jacob’s instruction, and she was not to be left out of it at any price.”
We observe that the Bible gives Tamar no personal family history; we have no idea whether she is even an Israelite. That is to say, Tamar is a kind of theological nobody (“just another nameless individual,” says Chrysostom). On her own, she has no significant identity, but she finds an identity by making herself part of God’s salvific intrusion into history, by audaciously incorporating herself into the Lord’s own inheritance.
For this reason the Bible treats her with unfailing respect. Indeed, King David himself named a daughter for Tamar. Earlier, when Ruth entered the household of Boaz, the people blessed her, saying to Boaz: “May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring which the Lord will give you from this young woman.”
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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