A Skeptic Reads the Bible 13: Judah, the First John

I've skipped over a little bit in order to reach this story because I want to tackle all of Joseph in one go. Which brings us to another of Jacob's sons, Judah. This is an odd tangent in the middle of the narrative, and is really as much about Tamar as about Judah himself. Judah has left Jacob's household -- one wonders whether this departure had something to do with his disgust at the recent massacre at Shechem -- and married a Canaanite woman, with whom he raises three sons: Onan, Er, and Shelah.

You might recognize the first of those, Onan, because it is the root of onanism, the archaic English word for masturbation. The reason for this linkage lies in a bizarre story about early Israelite sexuality, related in this chapter.

Er is the oldest son, and Judah marries him off to a woman named Tamar. Er, however, commits an unspecified "wicked" sin, for which God "put him to death." According to Israelite custom, wives were inherited just like most other forms of property; in this case, women pass to the eldest brother. So Er's wife Tamar became Onan's wife Tamar.

The property relationship involved here is complicated. Tamar became Onan's wife, but any children she bore him would first belong to the name of his deceased brother Er - in other words, as the Genesis author wrote, "the offspring would not be his." The author implies that Onan was therefore very selfish and decided that "whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground" to avoid getting her pregnant. This too was "wicked," and so God struck Onan dead.

And generations of conservative religious teaching has thus argued that the Bible outlaws masturbation. As you can see, this story has nothing to do with masturbation, and if you really wanted to interpret it entirely literally, pretty much all you could say was that it outlaws the withdrawal method of family planning/birth control. So much for that. I'm moving on, except to point out that there are many hundreds of very detailed laws in the Old Testament, and if God had really wanted to ban masturbation, he would almost certainly have included it very specifically, along with not wearing clothing of mixed cloth (i.e. polyester-cotton) and other such important restrictions.

Of more immediate relevance is Judah's realization that his sons are dying off at a prodigious rate. He doesn't want the third, Shelah, to suffer the others' fate. And naturally, like any good primitive chauvinist, he blames Tamar. He keeps Shelah single and instructs Tamar to "live as a widow... until my son Shelah grows up." At some point, the implication goes, Shelah will be righteous enough that he can be trusted to take on a wife as dangerous as Tamar. But not until then.

Tamar doesn't think much of this dismissal. I wonder at the politics here. There were really no independent, enriching careers for women: they could be prostitutes, or they could be wives (which some cynics and wags would argue was merely another, more enhanced version of prostitution). Certain conservatives have used this fact to argue that the Biblical prescriptions involving inheriting your brother's wife were a primitive form of social welfare policy. Maybe, but I doubt it. If the objective really was benevolence for women, there are more empowering ways to do it than passing wives around along with the rest of the estate.

Anyways, Tamar has lost the opportunity to be a wife, so she chooses instead to be a prostitute - though with a very specific objective. Years later, Judah is a widow, and he still refuses to wed Shelah to Tamar. So Tamar takes matters into her own hands. She dresses as a prostitute, disguises her identity, and seduces Judah (actually, he supposedly approaches her, and bluntly offers a goat in exchange for sex). She takes his walking staff, his seal and his cord, in lieu of the payment, and they head off to do the dirty. Tamar ultimately conceives as a result of this one-day stand. Judah tries to send his payment as promised, but his servants report that they cannot find his "shrine prostitute."

The ethics here are intriguing. Note that Judah does not seem to think he erred by actually having sex with a prostitute; indeed, the businesslike manner with which he arranges and delivers the payment suggests that this is probably a common occurrence in his life. Women in ancient Israel were of course not allowed remotely the same degree of sexual freedom as men like Judah.

The pregnancy is a further complication, however. Three months later, Judah is informed that Tamar is pregnant. Still unaware that he has slept with his daughter-in-law, he immediately demands her execution by burning. Technically Tamar was engaged to Shelah (although Judah obviously did not intend to complete this marriage as originally promised), and Shelah had not slept with her; therefore, she clearly had slept with someone else and deserved death as a punishment.

(Which, incidentally, points us probably to one of the reasons why sexual ownership of women becomes so rigidly important in many early patriarchal societies like Israel: it's a convenient method of sorting out birth control if men are allowed to sleep with any number of women, but women are targeted if they sleep with anyone but their husband.)

Tamar has a backup plan, however: she reveals all of the items she took from Judah months before as collateral for having sex with her. Judah, stunned, says only that Tamar is "more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her my son Shelah." Probably she could no longer be sent off to Shelah, since she bore Judah's child, but the Bible does not explain this detail. Instead, it notes only that twin boys Perez and Zerah were born of Judah.

Normally, the author of Genesis has resorted to describing women as dishonest, troublesome and rebellious. In this case, Tamar is to an extent all three, but for the first time, a woman clearly is portrayed as being more righteous than a patriarch. Judah admits this himself. So it's a striking moment. But at the same time, it's a depressing moment. Judah faces no real consequences for his actions. Under the laws later given to Israel, what he has done deserves the death penalty. Instead he faces no penalty.

He does, however, begin to change as a result of this occasion (I think). Earlier, he was part of the massacre at Shechem, and most recently was part of the conspiracy to abduct and exile his brother Joseph (more on this later). Then he is cowardly regarding Shelah's engagement to Tamar. But the story closes with his reluctant acknowledgement that he has wronged Tamar, and after he has moved back to live with the other brothers in Genesis 44, he even offers his own life in place of Benjamin's as a hostage in Egypt.

Read more of the "A Skeptic Reads the Bible" series, published on AssociatedContent.com:

"Abraham (Nearly) Murders Isaac in a Human Sacrifice" (Genesis 21-22)

"Deceitful Jacob, as Great a Swindler as his Grandfather Abraham" (Genesis 24-26)

"The Israelite Massacre at Shechem" (Genesis 34)

Check out the index to all published "A Skeptic Reads the Bible" commentaries.