Faithless Judah and a Righteous Canaanite

Introduction

There is nothing so illogical or unreasonable as to leave what is better for something that is worse. To leave what is secure, full of promise, and fulfilling for what is temporary, lackluster, and shallow. This is the unreasonableness of the call of the world, and it is a foolish call. It is foolish because no one follows that call because it makes sense or because it accords with truth, those who follow it follow illogical passions that lead us in a way we do not know. And yet this persists to be the problem with the people of God time and time again. In the Old Testament the people of God would consistently turn away from God despite his great signs and blessings to assimilate themselves to the world. Today we often face similar temptations, with the values, ethics, philosophies, and ideas of the world threatening to pull us away from a Biblical worship of God to a love of the world. Throughout Scripture we get a clear picture of exclusivity when it comes to what we assimilate ourselves to. 1 John 2:15 says Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. You either love the world, it’s ways, it’s values, it’s practices, its worship, its morals, and its loves or you love God, his righteousness, his glory, his eternal blessings, his covenant, and his Son. In our text today we see this dichotomy confronted in the life of Judah, who despite his massive moral failings finds redemption through repentance and will be used through his weakness and sin to bring about the promised King of God’s people.

Judah Betrays a godly heritage (1-11)

The first two verses of out text show Judah making a decisive move away from his covenant heritage towards the worldly and wicked culture and people of Canaan. As the next in line to inherit the family clan, he endangers the covenant family in a similar way that Jacob did when he moved the family to Succoth and adopted the false idols of the Canaanites.

Judah’s Canaanite Friend and Canaanite Wife

Judah turns his back on his brothers and begins to fellowship with a man from the Canaanite city of Adullam named Hirah. Hirah appears twice in this story, each time when Judah is led by his lusts to a forbidden woman. The first is the Canaanite woman who becomes his wife. All we are told about her is that Judah slept with her and she bore his children. These limited details clue us in to what Judah is being led by. He is abandoning the purity of the people of God and going to Canaan for a wife. If you’ve been following our series through Genesis, you know that this is a serious mistake. Esau brought grief to his parents by marrying Canaanite women, Abraham went out of his way to make sure Isaac did not marry a Canaanite wife. Intermarrying with the Canaanites was a step towards assimilating with the Canaanite culture. If the people of God assimilate into the wicked people of Canaan they are going to abandon the worship of God for the gods of the Canaanites, they are going to ignore the covenant of God in order to strike up covenants with the subjects of God’s wrath, and they will discard the promises of God in order to be like those around them. This isn’t only a marriage, it is a linking to the Canaanite people in a way that puts the purity of the worship of YHWH in great danger. This is highlighted by his rejection of the company of his brothers for the company of a Canaanite friend.

Judah is controlled by sexual desire and pride in his children. These two things become his idols and they will become his humiliation in the course of the story. Judah’s wife conceives and bears three children, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah then takes a wife, again a Canaanite woman, named Tamar. This young Canaanite woman should be an insignificant character in the grand scheme of things, and yet the events of this story solidify her into the story of the people of God.

Judah’s Wicked Children

Tamar’s husband, Judah’s son Er is killed because he was wicked in the sight of the LORD. No details are given to us as to what exactly brings about his demise or why God is judging him. Tamar is then married to Er’s youngest brother who is also counted as wicked in God’s sight and killed as a result.

Leverite Marriage

Now, to understand why Onan is killed and why he is seen as wicked in God’s sight, we need to understand the practice of Leverite marriage. In the ANE, immortalizing yourself and your family by establishing a living dynasty through your children was one of the most important priorities the head of a family would have. So if a man died without any children, his wife would be married to the brother or another close relative of the man. While sexual relations between in-laws is normally forbidden in the OT law, leverite marriage was an exception. The first son of this marriage would not be seen as the child of the biological father, but of his mother’s dead husband so his dynasty and family would continue through his relative. This was a common practice among the people of this day and a practice that God made legal in Israel. In fact, if a relative refused to partake of the marriage he would be publicly shamed by the woman, although he was not under obligation to marry her. The most famous case of a Leverite marriage in Scripture is found in the story of Ruth and Boaz.

Leverite marriages were optional, although they were strongly pushed for. Onan takes Tamar as his wife because she was obviously a beautiful woman, as is plain later in the story. He too is killed because of wickedness because he willingly sleeps with his brother’s wife but refuses to make conception possible because he knows the child would not be his. He is next in line to inherit the family headship and the last thing he wants is to birth a child that will take that inheritance away from his family by continuing his dead brother’s legacy. This is also why the redeemer refused to marry Ruth in Ruth 4, he knew that the land that came with her would not go to his children but to the offspring accounted to her first husband. But rather than refusing the marriage, Onan indulges his sexual desires with Tamar while refusing to give his dead brother an heir. Onan, it seems, had the same sins as his father, lust and selfishness for his own dynasty. For this wickedness, God kills him.

Judah Withholds his Son from Tamar

When Onan dies, Judah tells Tamar that he is going to wait until his third son is old enough to marry her and provide Er with children. However, we’re told that he sent her to her father’s house instead of keeping her with them until his son got older because he was afraid that his youngest son would die as well. Judah assumes that his youngest son will act wickedly with her just like Onan did. Judah’s lack of faithfulness to the promises of God has transferred to his sons and got even worse. Now Tamar is back with her Canaanite family for a marriage that will likely never happen.

Tamar's Trick (12-25)

Tamar isn’t stupid, she knows that Judah is in no hurry to marry her to his youngest son, in fact she will probably never marry him because Judah has sent her back to her family rather than keeping her in the family. This is where she hatches a plan of her own. Once again Judah is hanging out with his friend Hirah the Adullamite after his own Canaanite wife dies and he is sheering sheep rather than with his brothers. Tamar takes the opportunity to dress like a cult prostitute, someone who would prostitute themselves in the service of a Canaanite deity, and Judah takes the bait without knowing she is his daughter in law. She retains his personal belongings and he is unable to get them back. When he hears that she is pregnant he hypocritically condemns her sexual immorality and is about to have her burned to death until she sents him his staff and cord and he realizes that he is the father.

It is then that Judah speaks in this, the defining moment of the story in verse 26, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.”

Tamar’s Righteousness and the Birth of Promised Children (26-30)

This will prove to be a turning point in the life of Judah. Here he has been forced to confront his two idols, sex and children. She is pregnant as a result of his own lust and if she burns to death he will be killing off his own grandchildren and the future of his dynasty through his oldest son. Judah sees that the road he has been walking down is unrighteous and that he, like his sons, deserves death for his wickedness. Yet God has preserved him for the sake of his own promises and glory. God is faithful to his own plans and ruins the plans of rebellious people in order to establish his own.

Judah’s lust had been so well known that Tamar had known this trick would work. She also guessed that he would not kill her if he knew the children in her womb were his. Yet it might seem surprising that her actions are seen as righteous. After all, she tricked her father in law into committing incest and had two children as a result. And yet the favour of God seems to confirm her righteousness. She gives birth to twins that intentionally parallel the birth of Jacob and Esau, establishing her as a matriarch alongside Rebekah. She is sealed into the family of God as a matriarch of the people of God, a mother of David and therefore a mother of Christ. Her actions mirror that of Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho who was also a Canaanite, also prostituted herself, also used deception, and was also let into the people of God as a result of her deception. So how do we make sense of her being counted as righteous?

First, we note that Judah calls her more righteous than he. The focus is on his act of unrighteousness, not that her act was particularily righteous. He had refused to give his youngest son to her and thus left her a widow without children, left her out of the people of God by sending her back to her people, and left his oldest son without descendants. This was wrong of him because it was motivated by selfishness. He also was wicked by sleeping with who he thought was a prostitute as a widower but condemns her hypocritically for getting pregnant as a widow.

But she is still considered more righteous than he and she is divinely rewarded for this, why is that? Why is she inherently more righteous than he? After all, she is also guilty of immorality. Here is the thing. I don’t believe that Judah is saying that her immorality was a righteous action. It wasn’t. This whole trick reminds us of Lot and his daughters, a situation that is not meant to be copied but rather brings shamed to those involved. In order to figure out why she was more righteous, lets look at the themes that this text has been repeating.

The most consistent and prevalent theme in this text is assimilation. Judah with his Canaanite friends, Canaanite wife, and sons that act according to depraved morals shows a man and a family that is adapting themselves into the ways of the world rather than remaining true to the character of their covenant God. Remember what 1 John says the things of the world are? Lusts of the flesh, apparent in Judah’s sexual appetites, Lusts of the eyes, also apparent in Judah’s sexual behaviour, and the pride of life, apparent in Judah’s concern with posterity. Judah has left righteousness behind to persue the world. He has not loved the people of God, the character of God, or the promises of God. He has not valued the revelation or love of God. He is controlled by passions and desires that will assimilate him into the world around him.

So how is Tamar any different? Even though she sins in her actions, her desires and attitude is remarkably different from her father-in-law’s. While he is walking headlong into assimilation with the Canaanites, she longs to be assimilated into the people of God. While he is raising children who act wickedly, she longs to have children born into covenant with a righteous God. She doesn’t want to go back to her father’s house, she wants what Judah has. She is actively rejecting her way of life in pursuit of a way that leads to God. So while her actions are still wrong, her hidden motivations become apparent in her risking her life to stay in the people of God, and that motivation is a sign of genuine faith. That faith is rewarded by a place in the people of God and the lineage of the Messiah.

Assimilating to the People of God

It is easy to think that we are immune from assimilation to the world. Like Judah and his brothers, we live as sojourners and strangers in a world in which we are called to be a distinct and separate people. But what happened to Judah and what can easily happen to us is a confusion over our identity. Do we belong to the World or do we belong to God? Is this world, this culture, this people our home or is our home in heaven among a heavenly people in the presence of God? When we are sucked into worldliness, we are believing the lie that we belong here. The pressure to believe what is acceptable to believe in the world is a pressure to stop thinking of yourself and an heir of heavenly things and start thinking of yourself as belonging to the worldly system into which you were born. The difficulty with worldliness is that we are living in a society that we don’t actually belong to and in any society there is going to be an attempt to assimilate everyone into the values and views of that society, both consciously and unconsciously. The temptation to partake of the world’s system is both internal and external.

Internally, we are tempted to worldliness by the sinful flesh that is being mortified in us. When we first came to Christ we became a full citizen of heaven, however the process of putting out old sinful flesh to death is a lifelong one. Our sinful flesh fights against our heavenly citizenship by pulling us back into the worldly way of thinking. This happens in a few different ways:

Sinful Desires (lusts)

Assimilating to the world will have you following sinful desires that contradict what a godly lifestyle looks like. Judah immersed himself in the Canaanite world because he saw his sinful desires as worth more than the promises of God, and those were desires he could fulfil among the Canaanites. He could sleep with cult prostitutes and worship false gods that could be manipulated. To follow our sinful desires not only works against what God’s has called us to be, it draws us closer to a world we do not belong to. Hebrews 3:12-13 communicates this clearly, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. A heat that is deceived by sin becomes an evil and unbelieving heart that will eventually lead you to reject God altogether in favour of the sins of the world. Take care that sin does not prove you never knew God at all. Verse 14 says, For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

Idolatrous Desires

But not all worldly desires are inherently evil. We may also be assimilated into the world by idolizing the good gifts God has given us to use as fodder for praise and worship of him and giving him glory. Family is good, marriage is good, a career is good, a vacation is good, money is good, art is good, sports are good, study is good, having fun is good, but if any of those things take our forcus off of the glory or Christ or keep us from serving him with all the we are, they are idols. Christian songwriter Ross King sums it up well,

Anything I put before my God is an idol. Anything I want with all my heart is an idol. Anything I can't stop thinking of is an idol. Anything that I give all my love is an idol.

The world idolizes these things because it’s all they have to live for. They have no heaven to look forward to, no covenant to enjoy, no love of God to embrace, and no glory of God to adore. They are stuck with poor subsitutes of the joy that is in knowing God through Jesus Christ. Do not grieve if you have to give up something in this world that you value, you have an eternal treasure which moth and rust do not destroy and which thieves don’t break in and steal.

Anxieties

The third way we may be lured into being assimilated into the world is in anxieties. When we value the things in this world too much, the fear of losing them can become controlling. Whether we are worried about losing our safety, our health, our loved ones, our job, or our pride, anxiety can be a sure sign that we value this world too much. Not only this, but as Christians we know that God loves us and provides for us. Jesus told us that God knows we need the things we need and that if we are concerned with the business of the Kingdom of God, we can trust that he will look after us.

Conclusion

Tamar was considered righteous, not because she tricked her father in law, but because she desired what we best. She desired the Kingdom of God in the limited way she probably understood it. While she sought to be assimilated into the people of Israel, Judah sought to be assimilated into the Canaanites. This was a consistent problem both for the Patriarchs and throughout Israel’s history. Some theologians have theorized that one of the reasons God had Israel enslaved in Egypt is because they likely would have assimilated completely into the Canaanite culture before long. This was largely because, although they had the covenant and Word of God, their hearts had not been changed by the Holy Spirit in their hearts. Hebrews 4 tells us that this led to Israel being unable to rest in God because they did not believe him.

That leaves us a warning. The world is dangerous, the love of the world is toxic to our faith, and when we are assimilated into the world we are unable to rest in Christ. And this is why Christ came, to give us rest in him and through him to know God. Only by faith can we see the worth of that and be willing to sell everything for that pearl of great price. Don’t be assimilated into the world from which Christ died to save you. Assimilate yourself into Christ. Imitate him, love him, worship him, serve him. Assimilate yourself into his people, the church, into godly teaching, into the love of the Saints, into loving service. May God give us the eyes to see by faith the value of knowing him and may that make the world’s goods seem cheap and faded compared to the immeasurable joy and worth of knowing God in Christ Jesus.