1And it was at that time, and Judah went 3 O down from his brothers and turned to an Adullamite man, and his name was Hirah.
38:1. Judah. The eponymous ancestor of the Jews, Judah is the most prominent of the brothers in the Joseph stories, and here he is the only one of Jacob’s sons besides Joseph to have a separate story about him. Some say that the word means “to be thankful.” Its derivation is unknown.
38:1. Judah went down. The next chapter begins with “Joseph had been brought down.” The contrast is blatant (even more so in the Hebrew) between Judah’s independence and Joseph’s weakness: Judah went down, and Joseph was brought down.
2And Judah saw a daughter of a Canaanite man there, and his name was Shua. And he took her and came to her.
3And she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and he called his name Er.
4And she became pregnant again and gave birth to a son, and she called his name Onan.
5And she proceeded again to give birth to a son, and she called his name Shelah. (And he was at Chezib when she gave birth to him.)
6And Judah took a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
7And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was bad in YHWH’s eyes, and YHWH killed him.
8And Judah said to Onan, “Come to your brother’s wife and couple as a brother-in-law with her and raise seed for your brother.”
38:8. raise seed for your brother. This is known as the law of levirate marriage, from the Latin levir, meaning brother-in-law. See Deuteronomy 25 and the comments on it.
9And Onan knew that the seed would not be his. And it was when he came to his brother’s wife: and he spent on the ground so as not to give seed for his brother.
10And what he did was bad in YHWH’s eyes, and He killed him, too.
11And Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, “Live as a widow at your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up” (because he said, “Or else he, too, will die like his brothers”). And Tamar went and lived at her father’s house.
12And the days were many, and Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. And Judah was consoled. And he went up to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah, the Adullamite, to Timnah.
13And it was told to Tamar, saying, “Here, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.”
14And she took off her widowhood clothes from on her and covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself and sat in a visible place that was on the road to Timnah, because she saw that Shelah had grown up and she had not been given to him as a wife.
15And Judah saw her and thought her to be a prostitute because she had covered her face.
16And he turned to her by the road.
And he said, “Come on. Let me come to you,” because he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
And she said, “What will you give me when you come to me?”
17And he said, “I’ll have a goat kid sent from the flock.”
And she said, “If you’ll give a pledge until you send it.”
18And he said, “What is the pledge that I’ll give you?”
And she said, “Your seal and your cord and your staff that’s in your hand.” And he gave them to her, and he came to her, and she became pregnant by him.
19And she got up and went and took off her veil from on her and put on her widowhood clothes.
20And Judah sent the goat kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman’s hand, and he did not find her.
21And he asked the people of her place, saying, “Where is the sacred prostitute? She was visibly by the road.”
And they said, “There was no sacred prostitute here.”
38:21. sacred prostitute. On sacred prostitution, see the comment on Deut 23:18. The immediate point in this episode is that Judah is described as thinking that Tamar is a prostitute (zn
h) (38:15), but now his friend uses what is seemingly a more refined word, “sacred prostitute” (q
d
š
h)— which may also denote a higher level of prostitute—when he discreetly inquires about her.
22And he came back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her, and also the people of the place said There was no sacred prostitute here.’”
23And Judah said, “Let her take them or else we’ll be a disgrace. Here, I’ve sent this goat kid, and you didn’t find her.”
24And it was about three months, and it was told to Judah, saying, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has whored, and, here, she’s pregnant by whoring as well.”
And Judah said, “Bring her out and let her be burned.”
25She was brought out. And she sent to her father-in-law, saying, “I’m pregnant by the man to whom these belong,” and she said, “Recognize: to whom do these seal and cords and staff belong?”
38:25. Recognize. Tamar lays down the evidence and uses the same word that Joseph’s brothers used when they laid down the evidence of Joseph’s demise (the bloodstained coat of many colors) in front of Jacob. Like father, like son: Judah might well feel a chill down his back when he hears the word and knows that he was a guilty party on both occasions. We might even imagine that this double sense of his own errors is what moves him to declare: “She’s more right than I am.”
26And Judah recognized and said, “She’s more right than I am, because of the fact that I didn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not go on to know her again.
27And it was at the time that she was giving birth, and here were twins in her womb.
28And it was as she was giving birth, and one put out his hand, and the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it on his hand, saying, “This one came out first.”
29And it was as he pulled his hand back, and here his brother came out. And she said, “What a breach you’ve made for yourself!” And he called his name Perez.
30And his brother who had the scarlet thread on his hand came out after. And he called his name Zerah.