Tamar

A crowd drags a young woman toward the edge of town. Her father-in-law has ordered her death. She says nothing. She simply sends him a small bundle: a seal, a cord, and a walking staff. And everything changes.

This story comes from the middle of the book of Genesis, while Joseph has just been sold into Egypt by his brothers. One of those brothers, Judah, has left his family and gone down to live among the Canaanites near a town called Adullam. He marries a Canaanite woman, and they have three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah. When Er grows up, Judah finds him a wife. Her name is Tamar. In that world, a widow without children had almost no protection. Custom said that if a man died childless, his brother should marry the widow, so that a son could carry on the dead man's name and inheritance.

Genesis says plainly that Er was wicked in the Lord's sight, and he died. Judah gives Tamar to his second son, Onan, to raise up a child for his brother. But Onan does not want a child who would carry his brother's name and share the inheritance. He refuses his duty in secret, and that too displeases the Lord, and Onan dies. Now Judah is afraid. Two sons are gone. He looks at Tamar and wonders if she is the problem. So he tells her, go home to your father's house and live as a widow until my son Shelah grows up. But Judah has no intention of keeping that promise. Tamar goes home, and she waits. Years pass. Shelah grows up. No one sends for her.

Then Judah's wife dies, and after his time of mourning he goes up to Timnah, where his sheep are being sheared. Tamar hears he is coming. She takes off her widow's clothes, covers herself with a veil, and sits by the road at the entrance to Enaim. Judah does not recognise her. He thinks she is a woman selling herself, and he asks to sleep with her. She asks what he will give. A young goat from my flock, he says. Then give me a pledge until you send it, she replies. What pledge? Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand. Judah hands them over. She conceives a child. Then she goes home and puts her widow's clothes back on. When Judah's friend comes with the goat, there is no woman there. No one has ever seen one.

About three months later, Judah is told: your daughter-in-law Tamar is pregnant. Judah is furious, and he orders her to be brought out and burned. As they bring her out, Tamar sends him a message. The man who owns these is the father of my child. Do you recognise them? The seal, the cord, the staff. Judah knows them at once. They are his. And in that moment Judah does something he has not done before. He tells the truth about himself. “She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son.” Months later, Tamar gives birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. And Perez becomes the ancestor of David, and of Jesus.

Judah's seal was probably a small cylinder or stamp of carved stone, worn on a cord around the neck. Archaeologists have found thousands of seals like it across the ancient Near East. A man pressed it into soft clay to sign agreements and mark what belonged to him. It worked like a signature and an identity card at once. Handing it over to a stranger, along with his staff, was a remarkable thing to do, and it was proof no one could argue with.

Tamar's story is in Genesis chapter thirty-eight, and Matthew remembers her by name in the first family tree of Jesus. It is not a tidy story. But it is a story of a wronged woman who would not be forgotten, and a proud man who finally admitted he was wrong. So here is a question to carry with you. When you are shown that you have treated someone unfairly, are you willing to say, like Judah, she was more righteous than I?