The Targum reports the sentence bluntly. Three months after the crossroads, Tamar was known to be with child. The news traveled to Judah, and the Aramaic adds a telling gloss: Is she not the daughter of a priest? (Genesis 38:24) — a reference to the tradition that Tamar was the daughter of Shem, Malki-Tzedek, the priest of righteousness. The verdict follows without hesitation: Let her be brought forth and burned.
Pseudo-Jonathan, compiled in Eretz Yisrael in the early centuries of the common era, preserves a chilling irony. Judah does not yet know that the man responsible is himself. He speaks with the voice of the righteous tribal head, applying an ancient priestly law to a woman whose lineage he has tied to the priesthood in his own accusation. He is fluent, fast, and wrong.
The Sages read the speed of his judgment as the heart of the warning. In Bereshit Rabbah 85, the rabbis note that Judah condemned the very woman carrying the line that would produce David and the Messiah — and he did it in public, at full volume, before he checked his own hands. A man was prepared to set fire to the future of Israel because he had not yet looked inward.
The Targum lets the moment stand without commentary. The verdict is out. The fire is being prepared. Tamar is being led from the women's quarters to the place of judgment. And the three pledges — seal, mantle, staff — are hidden in a fold of her garment, waiting.
What the tradition wants us to hear is the sound of our own voice when we condemn too quickly. The speed with which we rule on others is often the measure of how little we have examined ourselves. Judah's sentence is about to be reversed, but only because a woman refuses to name him, and heaven refuses to let the evidence be lost.