Most people I know don’t really get into genealogies much. I have heard on numerous occasions someone say “I just don’t really get the book of Numbers. What do all of the ‘and he was the father of him, and so-and-so became the father of such-and-such’ have to do with anything anyway? I don’t get it.”
Would any of you be surprised if I told you I was not one of those people? The book of Deuteronomy is like my favorite book in the whole Bible and it is right up there with Numbers in the “he beget him” lines.
J
While genealogies may not be your forte, if they are the first thing that starts the New Testament AND they preface the life of Christ, well I hate to tell you this, but I think God is trying to say something.
A few years ago I told myself one November that I was going to write every day for one hour (this was before I really started writing) about women of the Bible. I planned on hitting all of them. Just bang bang bang down the list I would go.
Yeah. I got real far with that.
Instead I wrote for hours and hours and hours about pretty much three women.
In the span of a month that is an average of 10 days a woman.
Much to my delighted surprise, during this month of Bible women it hit me for the first time that, “HEY! There are 5 women in the genealogy of Jesus!! That’s great!” But hey! Isn’t something wrong with that? I am by no means a Bible scholar, and even less of one on the histories of Jewish culture, but one thing I do know from a life of Sunday School, church, youth conferences, adult conferences, Bible college, personal study, and tons of downloaded Beth Moore sermons is this: Women are not, unless the circumstances are extreme, listed in Jewish genealogies.
(Trust me. I read a lot of Deuteronomy.)
In putting two and two together, kids, I would say that five women in one genealogy might tip a person off that we have got PROBABLY FIVE extreme cases on our hands.
All that to be said, during this week before Christmas I thought that it would only be appropriate if we took a look at Jesus’ very EXTREME great-grandmothers.
Today we study: Tamar (Genesis 38)
By far she is indisputably one of the most controversial women in the Old Testament, if not the whole Bible. She is not what we would call a “good girl.” You don’t want your daughters doing the things she did. Then again, you also don’t want things done to your daughters that were done to her.
The story of Tamar really starts in Genesis 37 where Joseph is thrown into a pit by his brothers, who then decide to sell him to a caravan of gypsies. Tamar’s story being next is an odd place to put her story and can leave you asking, “How does this apply to the lady?” It doesn’t, except that the brother who did the selling would end up being the brother who did some buying later in his life.
After Joseph’s brother Judah had the idea of selling him rather than killing him because, “What will we gain if we kill him…?” he left his brothers and went to stay with a friend. I can only imagine that the Holy Spirit was not letting him rest easy at this point. Like most men who are trying to bury their guilt, he got himself a woman. A non-Israelite woman, at that.
Great. Nice work, son of Israel.
Time goes by, he has three sons, the sons grow up, they are terrible men, and Judah thinks it’s about time the oldest one settles down. So he gets for his son, Er, a nice little wife; our leading lady herself, Tamar. All would have been well if Er hadn’t been such a terrible man, but he was, so God killed him. In the tradition of the day, the second brother inherited the wife. Onan, the new husband, was also a terrible man and refused to give her children, so God ALSO put him to death.
At this point the third son (who no doubt was going to be bad, too) is too young to become a husband so Judah has the great idea, “Hey Tamar, go back to your daddy’s house. I don’t want my third son to die because he is married to you, too.”
So she goes home.
OK! Hold the phone, kids. Something is grossly wrong with this picture. In those days, you didn’t just GO HOME! You didn’t have that option! If you were a childless widow the end of the road for you had come. You couldn’t get a job, you had no money, you were a public disgrace and a shame to your community. YOU>WERE>DESTITUTE. Judah wasn’t just saying, “Go home and give me ten years,” he was washing his hands of her. “Let’s forget the whole thing ever happened.” He was throwing her away.
But I guess that wasn’t the first time he had ever done that, now was it?
Time continues to pass with the destitute Tamar living in her father’s house. Years later she hears that her mother-in-law has died and that Judah, the man who had withheld from her any shred of life, was on his way to see to some business.
I will warn those of you who are not familiar with this story that we are getting to the part that brings out some controversy. Up to this point she is a girl who has been tossed around against her will, leaving her penniless and without her dignity, being pulled through situations she never asked to go through. But now, well…..now she is about to change all of that. She has been withheld that which was rightfully hers. I like to call this section: The turning of the tides; justice will be served.
As I said, Judah has gone to take care of some business. At a resting point, he looks over and sees what he believes to be the prostitute of a pagan god. Clearly this man is not a God-honoring Jew, so the fact that she is a PAGAN doesn’t bother him. He has also shown himself to have no respect for human life apart from his own, so that she was a PROSTITUTE wasn’t an issue either. He goes over to the supposed-prostitute, who we know to be Tamar in disguise, asks for a “favor,” she lists a price of a few of his personal items, he succumbs, the end.
Not really.
If the story ended here, it would be nothing but a terrible tale of revenge and the inner satisfaction of self-justification she would have gotten from humiliating the man who had ruined her. In that case they both would have died dead-wrong.
Fortunately for us, this isn’t the end.
In the course of time Tamar finds out that she has gotten pregnant by her father-in-law, the oblivious Judah.
When he finds out all of this, in his own feelings of self-righteousness he says in a smug way, “BURN HER ALIVE!!!” As the flames are getting hotter and higher and she is walking to her sure death, she throws at his feet those personal articles he had sent to her as payment. No doubt looking him straight in the eye she says, “The owner of these things is the man who got me pregnant. Maybe you recognize them…”
Whoa.
Talk about a bold move.
I guess at this point she had nothing left to lose.
Recognizing those things as his, Judah says to her the most unusual thing: “You are more righteous than I.”
He finally provides for her a home and she gives birth to twins.
The end.
I’m serious this time. The end.
Wait. What?!?!? The end?
Blast.
Can I be honest? I really don’t know what to make of this story. It gets me all legalistic. Righteous? I mean, if we were comparing her to him, yeah, but righteous? On a scale of 1-10? “Like -6 for both of them,” I want to scream! “Righteous might be the wrong choice of words, buddy.”
WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE EITHER OF THEM DOING IN THE LINEAGE OF JESUS?????
I should throw my laptop across the room and completely give up on genealogies.
Hmmmm.
~~~~~
It has started to snow while I have been typing this. It’s incredible how quickly everything can turn white.
“Lord, how can such a sordid story in your family history bring you glory?”
There is no further mention of Tamar in the Bible. That is all we get.
But it does mention Judah. Maybe I am using too much liberality, but somewhere along the line I think Judah finally got it. In the continued story of Joseph it is hard to see him as being the same person that did such terrible things earlier in his life.
After the father of Judah and Joseph and “the Twelve” dies, Joseph says to his remorseful brothers (the same guys who sold him to gypsies) a line that to me brings the whole story full-circle.
(Gen. 50:19-20) “But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done: the saving of many lives.’”
I suppose I have to break down this legalistic rage this story produces.
I mean, isn’t that---the saving of many lives---- the story of Jesus? Aren’t people like Judah and Tamar the reason he came? Aren’t people like me the reason he came? Terrible people who do terrible things. We are all terrible people. We all have sordid stories. My own self-righteousness aside, I must admit that those two are no worse than I am.
Maybe they aren’t the wrong people to be in his genealogy.
My yard is now white for Christmas.
Maybe these were the people God chose to be his ancestors because maybe, just maybe, more than anyone else, they knew the depth of the need he came to meet. And they knew to the depth the grace that met that need.
“Come now, let us reason together,” say the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”
No comments:
Post a Comment