Bad Means, Great Ends

I'm determined to soldier on through Genesis today, but the truth is that I am in deep grief.  Our family pet, Charlie, died three days ago.  He had been a member of our family for nine years, from just a puppy.  We loved him dearly and gave him a very good life.  However, what we gave to him pales in comparison to all the joy he brought to us.  Gone, but not forgotten.  I don't know if there are pets in Heaven; the Bible does not speak to that.  But, if they are, I surely do look forward to seeing him again.

Some may wonder why the story of Judah and Tamar, (Genesis 38) is even in the Bible.  There are various speculations about that. One thing this story does, as well as the story of how Joseph's brothers treated him, is to show how far these 12 brothers were wandering from the God they purported to serve.  The law of Moses had not yet been given, although elements of it were in place, as evidenced by Genesis 38:6-10.  I'm getting ahead of myself today.  This story is not that familiar.  So, let me back up and give a synopsis.

God, in His divine plan, had determined that He would send Messiah Jesus through the line of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah.  He had a dickens of a time getting that line to bear godly fruit, however.  The first problem was that Judah married a pagan, a Canaanite woman.  Remember that, prior to this, all the way back to Abram, the godly line of Abraham's descendants had married "within the family".  The Scriptures tell us that Judah "got a wife" for his firstborn son, Er, predictably his chief heir.  It is highly likely Judah chose a Canaanite woman, as opposed to a godly woman with family lineage (a distant cousin), for Er, due to the nature of Tamar's name.1

However, Er was killed by God because of his evilness, before he could sire children.  Here's where the aforementioned element of the Law of Moses came in - - Levirate marriage.  Even in those days, probably instituted by Abraham, if a man died without children, his brother was expected to marry the widow and produce heirs.  (Note this was the case in the story of Ruth and Boaz.  See also Deuteronomy 25:5.)
Now, the second-born of Judah was Onan, whose name perhaps should have been "oh no", because he was just as evil as his older brother.  Recognizing if he produced heirs for Er, they would snatch away the firstborn's inheritance, whereas if he failed to produce heirs for Er, Onan's OWN children would inherit.  Therefore, he was deceptive and although he had sexual relations with Tamar, he deliberately failed to impregnate her.  Accordingly, God "took him out" also.
Judah found all this rather sobering.  A widower by this time, he had only one son left, a boy who was years away from marriage.  He promised Tamar she would be wed to the third son, Shelah, although Judah had no intentions of doing so.  I guess he assumed the problem was with her and that it would be a death sentence for the only son he had left.  He shuffled her back to her father's house to continue her widowhood.... indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Shelah grew to be of marriageable age, and Judah did not wed him to Tamar.   For whatever the reason she was determined to see the dictates of the Israelite God through, in her own life.  Still a young woman, she did not want to remain a widow.  Her methods for achieving that end cannot be condoned.  I think it highly unlikely she knew that God had chosen Judah to be the progenitor of the Messiah; she was merely thinking of her own future when she dressed herself as a Canaanite prostitute and laid a trap for Judah...a trap into which he happily fell.

As He often does, God overrode the many evils in this story to His own good purposes.  The offspring of Judah and Tamar were Perez and Zerah, twin sons.  Through Perez, despite Satan's attempts to thwart Him, God continued the Messianic line which ultimately produced Jesus Messiah (Matthew 22:24.)

So, this Bible story is here to show how God overcomes evil with good, in order to bring about His master plans.  Secondly, this story is here to illustrate how deeply the family of Jacob was being corrupted by the Canaanite influences around them.  During Judah's lifetime, the entire family of Jacob, we will see, has to flee to Egypt, where Joseph saves them and they band together to grow the Hebrew nation.  Enslavement by the Egyptians reinforces their religious, cultural unity, further protecting them from spiritual corruption over the 400 years they are there.

And, if you are familiar with Old Testament history, you will know that when God liberated the Hebrew people, He sequestered them in the Arabian desert, further refining them, giving them the Torah, weeding out the tares, burning off the chaff, getting them ready to inherit the Land promised to their forefathers.  Then, upon returning them to the Promised Land, he ordered them to annihilate all the Canaanite peoples living there, for the very reason of preventing such spiritual corruption from disrupting the Messianic line again.


Sources:

1     https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/all-women-bible/Tamar-No-1