Tamar Knew She Was the Mother of the Messiah

Judah had made himself king over his brothers. He was their spokesman, their negotiator, their leader. Then he told them to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites, and when Jacob's grief over the coat of many colors proved inconsolable, the brothers blamed Judah. He had proposed the sale. They stripped him of his dignity. He had to leave the family and seek his fortune alone.

What happened next is one of the stranger passages in Genesis, and the Legends of the Jews, drawing on earlier midrashic sources including the Book of Jubilees and the Testament of Judah, fills in dimensions that the biblical text only implies.

Judah met the king of Adullam, whose name was Barsan, and through him became acquainted with Bath-shua, the king's daughter. The wine at the banquet was too strong and the passion too convenient, and Judah married a Canaanite woman. The tradition compares this to a lion eating carrion: even Esau had eventually recognized that the daughters of Canaan were wicked, yet the lion Judah had to take one. The holy spirit cried out when Judah married her. The glory of Israel went down in Adullam.

He had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. He arranged for Er to marry Tamar, a daughter of Aram the son of Shem, which is to say a woman of entirely proper lineage, not Canaanite. Bath-shua hated Tamar for this reason, used artifices against her, and ensured that Er never touched her. An angel of the Lord killed Er on the third day after the wedding. Then Judah gave Tamar to Onan, and Onan refused to father children with her, and he too died. The name Onan, mourning, had been aptly chosen.

Judah promised Tamar his third son when Shelah was old enough. Bath-shua prevented it, choosing a Canaanite wife for Shelah while Judah was away. Judah was furious. God poured out wrath on Bath-shua for her wickedness, and she died within the year, a year after her two sons. Now the path was clear for Judah to give Shelah to Tamar. He did not do it. He feared Shelah would die like his brothers, and he waited. Tamar sat in her father's house, a widow, two years passing.

She had the gift of prophecy. This is what the tradition says plainly: she knew she was appointed to be the ancestress of David and of the Messiah. She could see the thread of sacred descent running through her, waiting to be completed, and she understood that she would have to act. When the holy spirit revealed to her that Judah was going up to Timnah, she put off her widow's garments, covered her face, and sat in the gate of Abraham's tent, at the road to Timnah. The reason she sat at Abraham's tent specifically is the tradition's own detail: she was placing herself at the site most associated with hospitality and divine encounter, as if advertising her lineage to anyone who had eyes to see.

Judah had never seen her face. Throughout her time in his household she had kept it covered in modesty and chastity. He looked at her now and did not recognize her. He stopped. The tradition says God sent the angel appointed over the passion of love, and this angel compelled Judah to turn back. He went to her. She asked for his signet ring, his mantle, and his staff as pledge against the kid of the goats he promised to send. He gave them. She had chosen well: the ring was the symbol of royalty, the mantle of judgeship, the staff of Messiahship. The three distinctions that would one day belong to her descendants, she collected as collateral from their father.

When her pregnancy became visible, she was dragged before the court. Isaac, Jacob, and Judah sat as judges. The rule was that the youngest judge spoke first, so the elders would not overawe the lesser. Judah gave his verdict first: she deserved death by fire, because she was the daughter of the high priest Shem, and that was the penalty for a priest's daughter who led an unchaste life. The preparations began. Tamar could not find the three pledges. She prayed: O God, answer me, that I may be spared to bring forth the three holy children who will be ready to suffer death by fire for the glory of your Name. The angel Michael came down and put the pledges where she could see them.

She threw them at the feet of the judges and said: by the man whose these are am I with child, but though I perish in the flames, I will not betray him. I hope in the Lord that He will turn his heart to make confession.

Judah rose. He said: it is better to be put to shame in this world than in the world to come. It is better to perish in a fire that can be extinguished than to be cast into the fire that devours other fires. I acknowledge that Tamar is innocent, and by me is she with child, because I withheld Shelah from her. A heavenly voice said: you are both innocent. It was the will of God.

The Book of Jubilees records Judah's own aftermath: he acknowledged that what he had done was evil, and he esteemed it hateful in his own eyes, and he did not approach Tamar again. His confession opened a door: Reuben, hearing it, came forward and publicly acknowledged his own sin against his father, which he had kept secret until that moment. One act of genuine repentance created room for another. Tamar gave birth to Perez and Zerah, twins who would carry the sacred line forward, Perez toward David, David toward the Anointed, and the scarlet thread Zerah wore on his wrist would one day become the signal Rahab hung in her window when the spies came to Jericho.