Tamer acts as a prostitute to have sexual relations with Yehuda, 38:15-18, but she is the heroine of episode. While usually it is not heroic to be a prostitute, in this case, Tamar had been wronged by Yehuda. Yehuda had lied to her when he told her to wait until Shela was older, 38:11, and the Torah specifically records that she only acted as a prostitute when it was self-evident that Yehuda had no intention of keeping his word. To correct Yehuda’s injustice to her, she risked her life, and in the end he admitted that she was righteous, 38:26. A person who risks his or her life to correct an injustice is a hero, and thus Tamar was a heroine. One might argue that while Yehuda did condemn her to die, maybe she did not know that she was risking her life when she acted. I admit that while she might not have known for sure that she would be condemned to die, there is no way that she could have excluded the possibility that she would die from her actions.
Tamar did not act impetuously but deliberately. When she bargained with Yehuda over the payment, she insisted on the particular items that could prove her innocence, 38:17. When she was sentenced to die, it appears that she calmly showed the items that proved her innocence. She must have known that Yehuda would have seized this opportunity to remove her from being a possible wife to Shela. Thus, she must have known when she acted that there was a risk that she would be killed. Yet, was being a prostitute the only way that Tamar could have rectified Yehuda’s injustice towards her? To answer this question, we have to understand what was the injustice Tamar was fighting. Was it just that Yehuda lied to her?
Why did Tamar act as a prostitute? 38:14 records that she acted since Shela did not marry her, and this implies that she acted as a prostitute to get married. The logic is that due to yibbum she was destined for Shela, which meant that she could not marry anybody else, but Yehuda was refusing to give her to Shela. Accordingly, the injustice of Yehuda was that he was forcing her to be an “old maid.” In fact, Rashi (based on Sotah 10b) explains that 38:26 which records that “Yehuda did not know her again” means that in the end Yehuda and Tamar married. However, Tamar could not have known that this would happen, and Rashi quotes a second opinion, which accords better with the text, that he never married her.
The chapter ends with the birth of her children and this is the conclusion of the story. G. W. Coats (1972) argues that this ending suggests that the reason Tamar acted as a prostitute was to have a child. According to this idea the injustice of Yehuda was that he was denying her the opportunity to have children. Once she had children the yibbum was fulfilled. Usually, marriage is needed to fulfill the law, but here due to Tamar’s actions the law was fulfilled without marriage. Thus, the desire to marry Shela was to have children, but once she had children she did not have to marry.
Why would Tamar be so desperate to have a child? Rashi (on 38:14) writes that she specifically wanted to have children with Yehuda apparently because she knew that Yehuda’s children were destined for greatness (Bereshit Rabbah 85:10). While this did occur, it is unclear how she could have known about Yehuda’s future descendants.
A second possibility is that she wanted to fulfill the law of yibbum, which seems to have existed prior to the Torah. However, this is unlikely since why should Tamar be so concerned about fulfilling this law, especially as it was not her fault that yibbum had not occurred.
A third possibility is that emotionally she needed to have a child. This appears to have occurred to Rahel when she told Yaakov “give me children or else I will die,” 30:1.
A fourth possibility is that children were important for economic reasons. Niditch (1979) argues that in those days a widow could not inherit her husband’s property, and being without children left her in a limbo. Once she was married she did not belong to her father’s home, and yet without children she did not belong to her dead husband’s home. According to this, the law of yibbum was to enable the widow to be part of the dead husband’s family. Thus, the injustice of Yehuda was that by not allowing Shela to marry Tamar, he put Tamar in a hopeless situation and her legal right to join the family was disregarded. When Tamar had children, she became part of Yehuda’s family entitled to financial support.
While all this makes sense, how could Tamer have known that she was going to conceive from this onetime event? I cannot believe that she intended to repeat this exercise until she got pregnant. I think there is another possibility. Yehuda did not want Shela to marry Tamar since he was worried that she was the cause of the other brothers’ deaths (Rashi on 38:11). (Is this called a black widow? See Shulchan Arukh, Even Ha-Ezer 9.) The reader knows Yehuda’s sons died because of their sins unrelated to Tamar but Yehuda did not know this. In essence he was accusing her of murder and this was the injustice to Tamar. Not only must this have been offensive but she also was being penalized by not being able to marry, to do yibbum or have children with all the resulting consequences discussed above. Yet, how did Yehuda think that Tamar had killed his sons? This we cannot know for sure, but we know that there was no evidence against Tamar. Maybe it is possible that he thought that his sons died because they had sexual relations with her. Did Tamar protest against his accusation? The text records nothing, but maybe her protests were left out. Even if she was silent maybe she thought it was hopeless to argue. How could Tamar disprove Yehuda? The only way was what she did, and Yehuda’s survival would be her proof. With this idea she did not have to become pregnant, but she was waiting until enough time elapsed that Yehuda could not refute her innocence. According to this idea, her intention would have been to prove her innocence which would have enabled her to marry Shela to fulfill the law of yibbum. In the end, Yehuda admitted that she was righteous, which meant that she was not a murderer. Also, as she became pregnant the yibbum was effectively accomplished, and it was not necessary to marry Shela.
What is the significance of this episode? In the beginning of the story of Yosef, Yehuda attempted to convince the brothers to sell Yosef, 37:26. (As we discuss on 37:25-30, "Who sold Yosef" the brothers did not sell Yosef.) However, in the end, Yehuda offered to go to jail instead of Binyamin, and his great speech caused Yosef to reveal himself to the brothers, 44:18-34. What caused this transformation of Yehuda?
James Ackerman (1982) points out some parallels between Yehuda’s offer and his episode with Tamar, chapter 38. The simplest parallel is that Yehuda left a personal pledge with Tamar, 38:17 while here Yehuda gave Yaakov a personal pledge to return Binyamin to Yaakov, 43:9. This correspondence suggests that it was Tamar’s actions that transformed Yehuda.
When Tamer challenged Yehuda to identify his personal items that he had left with her, 38:25, she taught Yehuda that one must act responsibly. Yehuda demonstrated his newfound sense of responsibility when he offered take responsibility for Binyamin when going to Egypt, 43:2-10, and when he offered to go to prison instead of Binyamin, 44:16-34.
Bibliography:
Ackerman, James, 1982, Joseph, Judah, and Jacob, in Literary Interpretations of the Bible, vol. 2, edited by Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis with James Ackerman, Nashville: Abingdon Press, pp. 85-111.
Alter, Robert, 2004, The five books of Moses: A translation and commentary, New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
Cassuto, Umberto (1883-1951), 1973, Biblical and Oriental Studies, vol. 1, Jerusalem: Magnes Press.
Coats, George. W. 1972, "Widow's rights: A crux in the structure of Genesis 38," Catholic Bible Quarterly, 34, pp. 461-466.
Niditch, Susan, 1979, The wronged woman righted: An analysis of Genesis 38, Harvard Theological Review, 72(1), pp.143-149.
Wildavsky, Aaron, 1993, Assimilation versus separation: Joseph the administrator and the politics of religion in biblical Israel, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
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