First Sunday of Advent: Tamar
Genesis 38:13–19, 24–27
An excerpt from The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible Throughout the Year, Ashley M. Wilcox (Westminster John Knox Press, 2021)
The story of Tamar may be the least familiar of the four women listed in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1:1–17. Tamar’s story falls in the middle of the Joseph narrative, immediately after Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery and before the passage about Potiphar’s wife (another seductive foreign woman). This account is about Joseph’s brother Judah and Judah’s daughter-in-law, Tamar.
Tamar is a woman who has experienced a lot of loss. She loses two husbands and her home, and she is waiting for her husbands’ third brother to be old enough to marry and give her sons. Her first husband, Er, was “wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death” (Gen. 38:7). Her second husband, Onan, pulled out and “spilled his semen on the ground” instead of impregnating Tamar (38:9).1 This was displeasing to the Lord, so God put him to death as well. According to the law of levirate marriage, Judah should give Tamar his third son, Shelah, to marry (cf. Deut. 25:5–10). But Judah is afraid that Shelah will die too, so he instead sends Tamar back to her father’s house to wait until Shelah grows up.
This text illustrates the failure of patriarchy to protect women who fall outside the patriarchal structure. One of the benefits of a patriarchal system is that everyone knows who the head of the family is: the patriarch (in this case, Judah). In an ideal patriarchal system, a woman has protection throughout her life: first from her father, then her husband, and then her sons. However, Tamar is a woman outside of this protection.2 After the deaths of her husbands, she is no longer a virgin, a wife, or a mother. She is a foreigner, making her even more of an outsider. Tamar is stuck in limbo, waiting at her father’s house and unable to marry again or to have children.3
When Tamar discovers that Shelah has grown but Judah has not given her to him in marriage, she takes the law into her own hands. She acts to protect herself and the family line by going to the next closest male relative: Judah. Tamar takes off her widow’s garments and disguises herself in a veil. Thus, Judah thinks that she is a prostitute and solicits her for sex (38:14–15). Tamar negotiates for his signet and cord and his staff in exchange, and Judah “[comes] in to” Tamar and impregnates her (38:18).
When Tamar takes Judah’s signet, cord, and staff, she puts herself in Judah’s role as the head of the tribe and takes on his identity;4 the Hebrew word for “staff” also translates as “tribe.” Symbolically, Tamar is now the head of the tribe. Thus, this marginalized woman subverts the patriarchy to do what is right and continue the family line, which leads to David and Jesus. When Tamar later confronts Judah with the signet, cord, and staff, he recognizes what she has done and says, “She is more in the right than I” (38:26). Jewish tradition does not stigmatize Tamar for what she did, but instead praises her.5
Because this text probably is unfamiliar to many in the congregation, one way for the preacher to approach it is to retell the story of Tamar, explaining her actions in the context of the law of levirate marriage. Without this context, it may seem like Tamar is engaging in strange or unethical sexual behavior. But with an understanding of why she makes these choices, the congregation can see that, through her courageous acts, Tamar saves the family name. The sermon can also highlight how God works through this seemingly powerless woman, who upends the power structure to save herself, her family, her people, and all of us. Christians should remember her story.
Have you heard the story of Tamar before? In what context?
How does the law of levirate marriage protect women?
How can churches celebrate Tamar and remember her story?
Onan’s sin was shirking his duty to impregnate his wife, not masturbation.
Susan Niditch, “Genesis,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 42.
Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, ed. Leander Keck, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015), 231.
Harold W. Attridge, Wayne A. Meeks, and Jouette M. Bassler, HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006), 62–63.
Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 11.
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