A Bible Study by the only people truly qualified to study the bible — those who don't believe.

Tamar and Judah

Genesis, Chapter 38

I’m going to jump ahead of Bible’s own arrangement and cover this little story.  For reasons I can’t explain it’s placed smack in the middle of the Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat saga, almost like some commercial break.  Back when I was a “Born again”  (Forgive me, I was 16.) I read the entire Bible, but this is one story of which  I have no memory. I had forgotten parts of others, but they clicked back into place after 25 years of neglect.  Not this one.  This is a grimly hilarious story that you just have to read for yourself.  If you ever want to get the nonsensical nature of the Bible in one short passage, this would be a fine candidate.

This tale deals with Judah, Jacob’s fourth son through Leah.  He goes off from the family and marries (horror of horrors) a Canaanite.  As we all know Abraham’s descendants prefer near incest to marrying the local girls, but Judah takes the bit in his teeth and goes and marries the daughter of Shua.  Here is yet another in the continuous chain of biblical slights to women.  She doesn’t merit a name.  Sad.  As a note, when I first read this passage I thought Shua was her name for the quote is “he met the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua.”  Hey, that looks like an actual named woman but alas, no.  Later it clearly states “Years passed, and Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died.”  Shua is the name of the father who did absolutely nothing in this tale, but still he warrants a name.  And the daughter?  Nope! Sorry. Nothing!   How they manage to get any women to follow this damned religion is beyond me.

Anyway, leaving the rant aside, they have three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah.  The boys mature and Judah finds a wife, Tamar, for the first boy, Er.

Then Er really screwed the pooch and pissed Yahweh off something terrible.  The Bible doesn’t state what Er actually did, but what it says is:

But Er, Judah’s first-born, greatly offended the LORD; so the LORD took his life.

That’s it.  Nothing else.  At first, you have to wonder, what could he have done?  Murder, rape,  massacring an entire village because  the chieftain’s son raped your sister?  Thinking with modern sensibilities, you assume it must have been profoundly terrible to merit such harshness.  At least that’s what you assume until you read further.

Then Judah said to Onan, “Unite with your brother’s widow, in fulfillment of your duty as brother-in-law, and thus preserve your brother’s line.”  Onan, however, knew that the descendants would not be counted as his; so whenever he had relations with his brother’s widow, he wasted his seed on the ground, to avoid contributing offspring for his brother. What he did greatly offended the LORD, and the LORD took his life too.

Now, I understand this is grim, but there is an entire graveyard of humor here.  Is this not hilarious?  God killed him because he jacked off onto the ground?  As soon as I read that I started scanning the skies waiting for the thunderbolt.  Oh, the terrible sins I have committed. I beg forgiveness, oh mighty protector of semen. I thought we had it bad, but I must say death is far worse than going blind or growing hair on your palms.

This seriously calls into question the accepted Catholic and Christian birth control practice of cloitus interruptus, commonly known as pulling out.  Have these people been putting their immortal souls in jeopardy all this time?  Don’t they read the Bible? All those nocturnal emissions that every young man experiences?  Doomed! We are doomed?  If this is a capital crime, heaven will consist of about four men and 15 billion women and a few hundred thousand eunuchs.  Wouldn’t the old patriarchy just shit to hear that!

Ah, but the tale continues.

So Tamar lives with her father waiting for the day when Shelah is old enough to marry her.  The call never comes.  Judah is terrified that his last son will “greatly offend the Lord”, and he will kill him dead.  These were a superstitious people to whom two sons dying after being married to the same woman would be taken as a sign.  So she waits slowly realizing she’s forgotten.

After years pass she hears that Judah’s wife has died and that Judah is shearing sheep near her town.  After the long lack of communication from Judah, feeling forgotten and alone, she plots an interesting revenge.  She takes off her widows garb and veils her face with a shawl like a temple prostitute and sits by the town gate.  And who would happen to stroll by but Judah.  I’m sure she put on an alluring little show and he’s likely horny as hell since the death of his wife so:

So Judah heads back to the hills and dutiful pays for his sex by sending a small goat back to town.  It seems adultery is just fine as long as you pay for it.  But the messenger he sends cannot find the harlot, nor was there ever a harlot at that gate.  Judah is unconcerned.  Let her keep his things.  But then:

About three months later, Judah was told that his daughter-in-law Tamar had played the harlot and was then with child from her harlotry. “Bring her out,” cried Judah; “she shall be burned.”

Tamar felt this to be unfair, so as they were dragging her out of her house, presumably to burn her, she screamed out:

But as they were bringing her out, she sent word to her father-in-law, “It is by the man to whom these things belong that I am with child. Please verify,” she added, “whose seal and cord and whose staff these are.”  Judah recognized them and said, “She is more in the right than I am, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” But he had no further relations with her.

She had twins.

Isn’t that just adorable! What can I possibly add to the sheer moral power that throbs from every word?  This is obviously divinely inspired.  That did it.  I’m going turn my life around and accept Jesus into my heart! God dammit  and pass the peas.

WTF!  This is hardly the ethical parable that I would tell to my child for him to use as a moral guide.  Of what possible use could this story be?  I am rather fascinated by the fact that in all my church going youth, I never once heard this particular scripture read in church.  And I think I would have noticed when all the semen started to hit the ground.  You never saw Charlton Heston dramatise this particular sacred event.  I wonder why not?  Just imagine the cinematic possibilities.  Onan in the tent spilling his seed into the dirt and God lunging through the flap and snapping his neck.”Never told Bible Tales” could be the title. Maybe Arnie could play God. I really think he’d like that.  My people will have to talk to his people.

Seriously though… Well, it is difficult to take this particular “epic saga” with any degree of seriousness.  I laughed out loud when I read it and had to quickly read it aloud to my loving wife.  This new habit of mine will eventually get on her nerves.   The truth is that this is just another myth in a poorly edited group of myths, all of which have so much to say about the screwed up condition of humanity.  They just don’t say much about perfection or God.  Or justice. Or kindness.  The Bible is not the story of God on Earth or in Heaven.  It’s a story of us, frail, imperfect and frightened.  It’s a story of how fear of the unknown makes us look for anything that will give us comfort and some sense of control.  The Bible is the story of how we invented God to give us an ally, a helper, a friend, however imaginary.  In that cold hard world shown to us by the scriptures, humanity needed whatever comfort we could get.

It’s just that we should have grown beyond that need by now.