Jacob thinks Joseph is dead, but while he grieves deeply for his lost son, the Bible tells us, "Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard." (Genesis 37:36) We will join Joseph in Egypt soon, but in the meantime the Bible has things to tell us about Jacob's son Judah. Judah was perfectly fine with the idea of killing Joseph until he realized he and his brothers could profit by selling him into slavery instead. In today's passage Judah branches out on his own, away from the family, and may be using his share of the ill-gotten money to make his start.
While reading about the life and the mistakes of Judah, we must keep in mind that he is the son of Jacob through whose descendants the Messiah will come. I think Satan thought the ancestor of the Messiah would be Joseph. Joseph was Jacob's favorite son and almost certainly his intended heir. It would have made sense to the devil that the one who was the heir would also inherit the covenant promises that the Lord made to Abraham. Joseph, as we will soon see, was the most godly son of the bunch even though as a seventeen-year-old boy his faith was immature and his character was still impulsive and prideful. But because Joseph had a heart for the Lord, Satan believed he might cut off the line of the Messiah if he could get Joseph killed by his jealous brothers. When that failed, the devil probably thought sending him into lifelong slavery in Egypt would be enough to keep him from fulfilling his destiny as the forefather of the Redeemer. But the Lord intended that the ancestor of the Messiah and one who inherited the blessings of the covenant promised to Abraham would be a son of Jacob and his first wife Leah. That son is Judah. Right now Judah doesn't seem like a likely candidate to be found in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, but as we read about his sins and poor choices we should be grateful to a God who has the power to change and redeem any life. Judah hasn't been very admirable so far and we aren't going to feel very impressed by him in our current chapter either. But the Lord is still working on him.
"At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah." (Genesis 38:1) Why does Judah leave his father's household? Well, "at that time" Jacob is mourning for Joseph and refusing to be comforted. No one can do anything for him, although they try their best as we were told in yesterday's passage. I like to think Judah's conscience is bothering him. At the very least, I think his father's household has become a place where Judah can no longer relax and enjoy being at home. He decides it's time to head out and make his own way in the world.
In Adullam he falls in love with a pagan woman. "There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her; she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan. She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him." (Genesis 38:2-5)
Judah intermarries with the idolatrous Canaanites and lives and works among these heathens. Yet a son he has with a Canaanite woman will become an ancestor of God's own Son. The Lord Jesus made Himself like us in every way possible, including having some very rascally characters in His lineage. He didn't come to the earth as a power-wielding king, although He could have and had the right to do so. He came humbly as a child into a poor family from a backwoods hick town in Galilee, with a whole bunch of liars, thieves, murderers, and ne'er-do-wells in His family tree. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't have to go very far back in my family tree to find some bad apples hanging on its branches, and neither did the Lord Jesus. It fills me with wonder that the holy and perfect Son of God didn't consider Himself too good to be born into a family full of sinners. On the contrary, His entire purpose in coming into this world was to "seek and to save the lost". (Luke 19:10) He came here specifically to interact with man just as he was and to make man into something better.
Judah will father a son who will be the ancestor of the Messiah, but not through his first wife the daughter of Shua. The Bible doesn't even tell us the name of the mother of Judah's first three sons, and that's a clue to us that she's not in the genealogy of Christ. Another woman will be, and Judah's union with her will result in a child conceived in deception and immorality, yet this child's name is on a leaf of the family tree of our Lord, which proves to us that He is able to redeem even our worst mistakes. The woman who appears in the family tree of the Lord is a woman who is first married to one of Judah's sons. "Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the Lord's sight; so the Lord put him to death." (Genesis 38:6-7) We don't know what Er's sins were, but they were so heinous that the Lord took him out of this life at a young age before he fathered any children with his new wife.
Now we see Judah advising his next eldest son to enter into what was called a "levirate marriage" with Tamar. It would not have been called this in Hebrew, for "levir" is a Latin word meaning "brother-in-law". We will find more references to this type of marriage in other places in the Old Testament, but its purpose was to keep the property and the wealth of the dead brother in the family. If his widow remarried outside of the family then everything she inherited from her dead husband would pass on to the new husband and then in time it would pass on down to children she had with the new husband. If a man died with a son and heir, there were no worries about anything passing out of the family. But if a man died without an heir, the custom was that one of his brothers would marry the widow. The property would then pass on down to the children he had with his brother's widow. If the man had other wives, the property could not be inherited by children he had with them. It could only go to the children he had with his brother's widow. Not only did this carry on his brother's name and his brother's estate, but it provided a living for the brother's widow. She would have sons who were property owners who could take care of her in her old age.
"Then Judah said to Onan, 'Sleep with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.'" (Genesis 38:8) I don't believe Judah is telling his son to have relations with Tamar outside of marriage. That's not how the process worked. She would have become a legal wife of Onan, though perhaps not his first or only wife.
Onan goes through the motions of being obedient to his father and respectful of his dead brother, but he ensures that no children will result from his union with Tamar. "But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord's sight; so the Lord put him to death also." (Genesis 38:9-10) Onan uses a form of birth control because he doesn't want to have a son with Tamar named after his brother and he doesn't want his brother's property to go to a son he fathers with this woman. I assume Onan either despised his older brother so much that he wants his name to die out or else he was too prideful to father a son who would appear in the genealogical records as the son of Er, not as the son of Onan. He would never be able to take the credit for being the child's father, for his name would be entirely left out of that particular branch of the family tree. Even though Er did not literally father the child, he would be listed as the father on the birth certificate, so to speak.
Some people have used what Onan does in Genesis 38 to condemn the use of birth control. His sin is not in using birth control. The Lord doesn't take him out of the world by death because Onan uses birth control. If he and Tamar agreed together that they would use birth control, that would be their own private business as a married couple. The Lord doesn't put people to death for deciding not to have children. Onan's sin is in not fulfilling his vows or his duty. Tamar is not in agreement about never having an heir to inherit her husband's property and to take care of her in her old age. I think what Onan does is a symptom of his heart being cold and hard toward everyone. He's rebellious toward his father even though outwardly he pretends to obey him. He's rebellious toward the customs of the day. He doesn't care anything about his dead brother or about what happens to anything that belonged to him. He doesn't care whether the name of his dead brother dies out. He doesn't care what happens to his brother's widow, who is the innocent party in this whole mess. Due to his complete lack of compassion for those around him, and due to his rebellious spirit which evidently would never have changed, the Lord takes him out of this life.
Judah has one more son but he's not old enough to marry yet. He promises his son to Tamar when he comes of age, but until that time he instructs Tamar to move back in with her parents. We must assume Tamar is still a very young woman, possibly much younger than her two previous husbands, and that there would not have been enough of an age difference between her and Shelah to matter. "Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, 'Live as a widow in your father's household until my son Shelah grows up.' For he thought, 'He may die too, just like his brothers.' So Tamar went to live in her father's household." (Genesis 38:11)
Judah knows something is wrong with his sons, I think, but he superstitiously blames their deaths on their marriage to Tamar. It's not her fault they were wicked men. It's Judah's fault for marrying into a pagan culture and for not raising his sons in the reverence of the Lord. But he's afraid to arrange a marriage between Shelah and Tamar, either because he feels any man married to Tamar is cursed or because he knows Shelah isn't going to turn out any better than his older brothers did. If Shelah marries Tamar and does the same thing Onan did, Judah fears the Lord will let Shelah die. Judah promises Shelah to Tamar but appears to have no intention of following through.
His deception puts Tamar in a difficult position and the Lord doesn't like it when widows are put into difficult positions. The Bible has a lot to say about how sinful it is not to care for widows and orphans. Judah doesn't care about the widow of his sons Er and Onan but has merely come up with a way to put her off and get her out of his household. In order to make her think he really intends to let Shelah be her husband, he instructs her to "live as a widow" and not marry again until Shelah is old enough to marry her. But without a husband, if her father dies she has no one to provide for her. Without a husband, she can have no sons to provide for her. She might end up a beggar on the street corner someday and Judah couldn't care less. She is being treated very poorly and will decide she isn't going to put up with it. She's going to take matters into her own hands and deceive a deceiver. She's going to get what is owed to her by this family and she's going to do it by using something that has brought down many a carnally-minded man: sex appeal.
Join us tomorrow as this story becomes even more sordid and complicated and when Judah fathers an ancestor of the Messiah by Tamar who passes herself off as a prostitute. It's stories like these that prove to us that our Redeemer is able to redeem anything from our past. Many of the characters in the Bible have shameful pasts, but when they finally allow the Lord into their hearts, He takes even their worst failures and turns them around.
No comments:
Post a Comment