God's Redemptive Justice

Last week we began our study of this fourth and final major section in Genesis, which is about the “family history” of Jacob told to us primarily through the life of his favorite son, Joseph. But we noted that, while Joseph is the dominant figure of these final 14 chapters of Genesis, it is a mistake to consider this section to be only about him. Joseph plays a central role, to be sure; but the “family history” of Jacob is about Joseph and his brothers, who together make up the founding fathers of the ancient nation of Israel.

Now, why should we care about this family history of the ancient nation of Israel? Because this is the national family that was promised to Abraham, an indicator of the blessing of God to Abraham as well as the blessing that would pass through Abraham to “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:2-3). The Bible tells a grand story of the Creator God who made his world out of love and so acts to save his world out of that same self-giving love. But this “story of salvation” is the story of God revealed to us through his people whom he has chosen to be his agents of this rescue plan for his world.

And if the present chapter tells us anything about the people God has chosen to be his agents of this rescue plan for the world—well, my oh my. What a mess we have on our hands here. This chapter, like Genesis 34, is one of those chapters that really does have to be handled with care.

What are we to make of this rather complicated and sordid story? All kinds of things have been made out of it, and it is my task today to examine it with you. I want to suggest that one of the central things this story is about is justice: God will bring justice to all injustices as he fulfills the promise he made to Abraham. Let’s take the story in 3 sections. First, the vileness of Judah in verses 1-11. Second, the vindication of Tamar in verses 12-26. Third, the victory of God in verses 27-30.

The Vileness of Judah

First, let’s consider the vileness of Judah in the first eleven verses.

Joseph’s Brothers

Now, the first thing we need to say is that this whole story, the entirety of Genesis 38, can seem to be out of place. The last verse of chapter 37 has Joseph being sold as a slave in Egypt, but we don’t hear anything about Joseph in the present chapter. Then, the first verse of chapter 39 picks up the story of Joseph seamlessly. It seems like Genesis 38 is an unnecessary interruption to the original story. Many critical students of the Bible have come to that conclusion.

But there are clear indicators that the story is placed here by the author of Genesis deliberately. The fact that Genesis 39:1 essentially repeats the information we were given in the last verse of chapter 37 shows that this “insertion” was put here on purpose. We’ve also seen this kind of thing before in Genesis. After we are told about the births of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25, we have the account in Genesis 26 (vv. 1-33) which says nothing about the twin boys before they become the dominant characters again in chapters 27–36.

So, why does the storyteller of Genesis interrupt the Joseph story to tell us about this story from the life of Joseph’s brother, Judah? Well, remembering that this last section of Genesis is not so much about Joseph as it is about all the sons of Jacob, the children of Israel, that question isn’t that difficult to answer. In fact, in the introductory story found in chapter 37, there are two of Joseph’s brothers who play a prominent role: Reuben and Judah.

Reuben, the oldest of Jacob’s 12 sons, attempted to rescue Joseph from being murdered by his other brothers by advising them to throw Joseph into a pit and letting him die there. Reuben intended to go back and rescue Joseph later, but his plan was thwarted by Jacob’s fourth-born son, Judah, who convinces his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery.

Looking with a wider lens on this story in light of Genesis as a whole, we see the same kind of sibling rivalry going on here that we saw with Cain and Abel, and with Isaac and Ishmael, and with Jacob and Esau. The rivalry is not simply the all-too-common experience of brotherly quarrels and, yes, sometimes of violent aggression; the rivalry is about the question of who will be the chosen one to carry on the Abrahamic promise. All the brothers are united in their hatred of Joseph, the one who is clearly Jacob’s favorite. But, with Joseph out of the way, who, then, will be the greatest among the rest of the brothers?

Reuben, the firstborn, seems to have lost his place because of his actions in Genesis 35:22 and seems desperate to try to get it back.[1]Simeon and Levi, the next eldest sons, seem to have been left behind, possibly because of their actions in Genesis 34. That leaves us with Judah, who, by the end of chapter 37, has both thwarted Reuben’s plans to rescue Joseph and has also won the respect of his brothers.[2]So, is Judah now to be the “chosen one” among Jacob’s sons? Is he qualified to be the one?

Judah’s Children

When we look now at Judah with Joseph apparently out of the way, what do we find? We find a story about Judah and his children. And it’s not a pretty picture. Judah himself marries a Canaanite woman, which is suspect enough. She gives birth to three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah.

The story fast-forwards to when “Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD put him to death” (vv. 6-7). The story is abrupt and terse, but that’s because it’s not important for us to know why Er was deemed to be so wicked. The name Er is the name wicked spelled backwards in Hebrew. Er is evil personified in this story. There’s a sinister power at work here. Just as God intends to save the world through his people, so the hellish opposition to God’s salvation project ordinarily runs through human agency as well.

Judah tells his next oldest, son, Onan, to “perform the duty of a brother-in-law to [Tamar], and raise up offspring for your brother” (v. 8). Judah wants the family line to continue, and he wants it to continue through his oldest son. But Onan rebels, knowing “that the offspring would not be his,” and refusing to “give offspring to his brother.” What he did was also wicked in God’s sight, so God “put him to death also” (v. 10).

What is going on here? Let’s go ahead and set the record straight: This is not a story about birth control. To use this story as biblical proof that God sees all forms of birth control as wicked would also require us to say that God also expects his people to practice levirate marriage.

Onanism has one particular definition in the English language that, let’s just say, is really quite off the mark of why what he did was so wicked in the context of the biblical story. Sibling rivalry is a major theme, and so also is theme of a chosen seed. In Genesis 3:15, God said that there would be a “seed of the woman” who would overthrow the “seed of the serpent” and put the creation right again. In fact, this “seed” theme, the emphasis on having children, goes back to the first chapter of Genesis when God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. God’s purpose then was that by having children together, Adam and Eve would be engaging in “an eschatological pursuit—the creation of a people who reflect the image and glory of the Creator.”[3] Onan’s wickedness is about his disrespect for that promise of offspring.[4] And that kind of disrespect puts the entire salvation project in jeopardy.

Judah Himself

And now, with two of his three children dead, Judah refuses to give his youngest son to Tamar to raise up the offspring. He, too, is now seen as disrespecting the promise, especially since he makes an insincere promise to Tamar in verse 11. “Remain a widow in your father’s house.” A childless widow, which reminds us of the other theme of barrenness we find throughout the Genesis account. Once more, all of this is a sign of that dark and mysterious evil which is at work in these interpersonal relationships in light of the Abrahamic promise that is being subverted. Judah and his children are all in collusion with Satan to subvert God’s plan of salvation. That is the vileness of Judah.

The Vindication of Tamar

That’s not to say that there is nothing about this story which has any application for us today. Look, when God’s people refuse to participate in God’s saving purposes that he wants to bring into his world through them, there are real victims, real injustices that take place in God’s world. And that’s a real travesty. That God’s people would collude with evil against God’s good purposes? God is a God of justice, which is why he vindicates Tamar who, in this story, is a victim of Judah’s injustices.

Modern readers of this story can easily miss this, but the story will not let us get away with it. It’s easy for us to throw shade at Tamar for her behavior in the following verses, but let’s consider some things we can properly discern from ancient culture, the larger Genesis narrative, and from the text of this story itself.

The Plight of the Widow

The Bible is full of verses that remind us of just how difficult it was to be a widow in the ancient world. That is easily forgotten in our day when we have things like life insurance policies and social security and survivor benefits. To be a widow in the ancient world was to be in immediate danger of destitution and deathly impoverishment.

But God is a God of justice, so he is concerned that the helpless and marginalized of society not be neglected. Widows and orphans, and also immigrants, are the ones most often mentioned. “The LORD watches over the sojourners; he uphold the widow and the fatherless,” says the psalmist in Psalm 146:9, “but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”

This story testifies to God’s concern for Tamar, as we will soon see. But we can already make the point that God’s people must care about what God cares about. And even if widows in our day—or orphans or immigrants for that matter—even if we have social security nets to support them in some ways, we might be reminded that often those social security nets are only just enough to keep them out of sight and out of mind.

The Barren Woman

Not only was Tamar a widow, but she was also childless, and this is the central problem of the present chapter.[5]It’s also a really big problem throughout Genesis, reminding us of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Rachel. Could Tamar’s childlessness be meant to be seen in the same light?

What we are told about Tamar’s actions in verses 13 and following comes to us without theological commentary, so we have to discern for ourselves the author’s intended meaning. Tamar resorts to a desperate, and yes, deceitful, scheme in order to become pregnant. But she succeeds, becoming pregnant by Judah himself.

Does God approve of this? According to Mosaic law, what she did not only was prohibited but also brought the sentence of capital punishment, both for her and for Judah (Lev 20:12). At the same time, Tamar has been victimized by Judah’s own faithlessness: he has kept her from marrying his youngest son that he promised to her and that she waited the allotted time for.

The Verdict Announced

So, what does God say? Well, it does seem that God’s explicit disapproval of Er and especially Onan at least suggests that God wants Tamar to have children in the family tree of Judah. Judah had withheld his last remaining son from Tamar, perhaps because he blamed her for his sons’ deaths.

But when his own complicity in the matter is revealed, just before Tamar is sentenced to death, Judah says something in verse 26 which is meant to tell us God’s own verdict on the matter: “she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” Righteousness here has nothing to do with moral virtue but with the decisive verdict that comes from “the implicit lawcourt in which they are squared off against one another”: God has “found in her favour and against” Judah.[6]

And, do you know why? Because Tamar is the only one in this story who is faithful—not because she is so morally pure and virtuous, but because she is the only one who demonstrates faith in the gospel, in God’s great promise made to Abraham. And so, God finds in her favor. She has been vindicated. Declared to be in the right. In other words, justified.

The Victory of God

And there we find the enduring message of this story for you and me to this day. This chapter is about the justice of God, and yet, God’s justice, his bare justice, is a terrifying proposition for all of us sinners. How can any of us be in the right? That is our problem yes, but it is also God’s problem, which is why this story also points us forward to the victory of God himself.

God’s Faithfulness

You see, God could perhaps be seen as just if he were to render the verdict guilty over all of us. The problem is that God has made a promise, and, unlike Judah in this chapter, God will not be unfaithful to his promise.

What is his promise? Without repeating again the promise as it comes to us in God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, let us say it another way. Hebrew scholar Robert Alter says this, in words that are meant to help us understand how to read a story like this one in Genesis 38:

The implicit theology of the Hebrew Bible dictates a complex moral and psychological realism in biblical narrative because God’s purposes are always entrammeled in history, dependent on the act of individual men and women for their continuing realization.[7]

Now that is risky business on God’s part! That he would depend in any way on the actions of sinful human beings to see to it that his purposes are realized is extraordinary.

Patience with God

If it’s true, and the Bible insists that it is, that this is the way God has chosen to carry out his plan, then at the very least it ought to produce in us who want to trust him a healthy patience with God as he demonstrates his faithfulness somehow, in some way, through the sometimes-faithful-but-much-more-frequently-faithless actions of others.

In the immediate aftermath of this story, in verses 27-30, we come to the moment when Tamar gives birth to Judah’s child, to his children, in fact. “When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb.” The birth story that follows, in verses 28-30, are unique in their own right, and yet they remind us of several things we’ve seen before. Twins in the womb who seem to be in some sort of struggle for who comes out first—this reminds us of the Jacob and Esau story. It certainly indicates that something significant is happening in the birth of these children, something that fits the story we’ve seen so often in Genesis, something that is meant to advance the sovereign purposes of God in redemptive history.

Now at the moment it was all happening, it would be impossible to know what is going on. But we have the benefit of hindsight, so we can see. The birth of these children marks a major moment in the victory of God, in God himself being just.

Justice for All

You see, these children, born to Judah, keeps the family tree of Judah going. We do find out later in the biblical record that Judah’s youngest son, Shelah, did have children of his own (Num 26:20), but at this point in the story at least Judah is in danger of having no descendants. So, even though Judah himself is implicitly found guilty in this story, God’s justice is redemptive, offering salvation even for guilty Judah himself.

There is justice here for Tamar, of course, but with hindsight we see a justice for her that we would not have otherwise known. It’s not just that the barren widow now has hope; it’s that she is now and forever entrenched in the great Abrahamic family.

And that means, in the great victory of God portrayed in this complicated story, there is justice for all of us. The strange birth story of the twin boys has got our attention for a reason. The second-born son, not the first, is the one we are to watch, the one who breaks through and comes out first after all. Perez is his name.

Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. (Ruth 4:18–22)

Yep, that David. The great king of ancient Israel, and the forefather of the great king of the world today and forever, Jesus the Christ.

But we haven’t quite got there yet. There’s more to this story as it fits within this last section of Genesis. But what we see already is how God himself comes through, how God himself is righteous, faithful to the covenant he made with Abraham, faithful to do what we all long for him to do: to set the world right once and for all through his chosen agent of salvation.

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[1] Joel S. Kaminsky (Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2016], 60), states: “It is conceivable that Reuben hoped to recapture his lost status by saving Joseph . . . . Later in the narrative there is evidence that Reuben is indeed till trying to regain his father’s respect and will go to great lengths to accomplish this (Gen 43:37).”

[2] Kaminsky, 60.

[3] Samuel Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince: The Joseph Story in Biblical Theology, vol. 59, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022), 65.

[4] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, vol. 2, Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 369.

[5] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 365.

[6] N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 49.

[7] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, Revised and Updated (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 12-13. Emphasis mine.