Dennis Tuuri

# Providence of God

We come today to a portion of the book of Genesis where we see that sun rising in a very unusual way. This is probably many of you might know this only because of the warfare in the world. The wrath of men will praise God. Many of you may know that this is actually what’s referred to as Orthodox Easter. There are two different Easter celebrations. The Orthodox Church, what some refer to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, has a different calendar than the western church, and this is their celebration of Easter, and today is—well, it may not seem like it—a story of resurrection.

We have beautiful flowers here today like we had a beautiful banner last week. Someone said earlier I mentioned that the weather seems to have come a week late, but maybe we just celebrated Easter a week early, but it shows this movement, does it not? From clouds to sun, from death to resurrection. At the middle of the first book of the Psalter is Psalm 22, which we’ll talk about in Bible class next week, Lord willing, unless I’m providentially hindered again.

The middle of that first set of Psalms, that first book of the Psalms is Psalm 22, which has this great picture of the death of Christ and his resurrection, the sufferings of the righteous, suffering for sin, and then the enthronement of Christ and all the world coming to him. And while it may not seem like it at first, I think we see that in today’s scripture reading. Today’s scripture reading is found in Genesis 38.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Genesis 38. It came to pass at that time that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. And he married her and went into her. So she conceived and bore a son and he called his name Er. She conceived again and bore a son and she called his name Onan. And she conceived yet again and bore a son and called his name Shelah. He was at Chezib when she bore him. Then Judah took a wife for his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Judah’s firstborn was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord killed him. And Judah said to Onan, “Go into your brother’s wife and marry her, and raise up an heir to your brother.” But Onan knew that the heir would not be his.

And it came to pass when he went into his brother’s wife, that he emitted on the ground, lest he should give an heir to his brother. And the thing that he did displeased the Lord, therefore he killed him also. Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, “Remain a widow in your father’s house till my son Shelah is grown.” For he said, “Lest he also die like his brothers.” And Tamar went and dwelt in her father’s house.

Now in the process of time, the daughter of Shua, Judah’s wife, died. And Judah was comforted and went up to his sheep shearers at Timnah. He and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And it was told Tamar, saying, “Look, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.” So she took off her widow’s garments, covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself and sat in an open place which was on the way to Timnah.

For she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given to him as a wife. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a harlot because she had covered her face. Then he turned to her by the way and said, “Please let me come into you.” For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. So she said, “What will you give me that you may come into me?” And he said, “I will send a young goat from the flock.” So she said, “Will you give me a pledge till you send it?” Then he said, “What pledge shall I give you?” So she said, “Your signet and cord and your staff that is in your hand.” Then he gave them to her and went into her, and she conceived by him.

So she arose and went away and laid aside her veil and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the young goat by the hand of his friend the Adullamite to receive his pledge from the woman’s hand, but he did not find her. Then he asked the men of that place, saying, “Where is the harlot who was openly by the roadside?” And they said, “There was no harlot in this place.” So he returned to Judah and said, “I cannot find her. Also the men of the place said there was no harlot in that place.” Then Judah said, “Let her take them for herself, lest we be shamed; for I sent this young goat and you have not found her.” And it came to pass about three months after that Judah was told, saying, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has played the harlot. Furthermore, she is with child by harlotry.” So Judah said, “Bring her out and let her be burned.” When she was brought out, she said to her father-in-law, saying, “By the man to whom these belong, I am with child.” And she said, “Please determine whose these are, the signet and cord and staff.” So Judah acknowledged them and said, “She has been more righteous than I, because I did not give her to Shelah my son,” and he never knew her again.

Now it came to pass at the time for giving birth that behold twins were in her womb. And so it was when she was giving birth that the one put out his hand, and the midwife took a scarlet thread and bound it on his hand, saying, “This one came out first.” Then it happened as he drew back his hand, his brother came out unexpectedly, and she said, “How did you break through? This breach be upon you.”

Therefore, his name was called Perez, or breach. Afterward, his brother came out who had the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this chapter of holy scripture. And we pray now that we would handle it carefully and yet judiciously and yet understanding the truths that your spirit would teach us from it. Help us, Lord God, to see in this story what you have for us and help us to see in every time we should look to the scriptures, the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection and ascension. So grant this to us, Lord God, for the sake of your kingdom. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

The scriptures are just a wonderful book—silly thing to say, I suppose—but it is so true. God has been so gracious to give us such a delightful and yet immensely significant word for us. He communicates himself to us through that word as the spirit takes that word and illumines our understanding with it.

A text like this is a case for much joy to me. It’s a text that I always kind of read over quickly in the past. It’s kind of uncomfortable stuff in this text, but yet if you slow down and take a look at it, it has just beautiful pictures in it, and so many of them. We’re going to have to go rather quickly through this text to try to get to at least some of the more significant details of what’s going on here.

First, just remind us: we’re going through the scriptures and looking particularly at male-female relationships began in Genesis 2 and 3, study of marriage went through the lives of the patriarchs, at the marriage of some of the patriarchs. We’re still in Genesis. We’re still in the lives of the patriarchs, moving from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, which closes out the book of Genesis. So we’re looking at these and we’ve looked at nearly everyone.

I omitted one. And we didn’t talk about Shechem and Dinah. You know, Jacob, we left Jacob crossing into the promised land with God’s blessing upon him. The sun’s rising. He’s wrestled all night with God. He’ll continue to wrestle all of his life. He has Dinah, apparently on the other side of entering into the promised land. Her story, you know, is one where she’s out there with the Shechemites and one of the Shechemite guys comes and lays with her and then wants to marry her.

And then Jacob’s two sons, two of Jacob’s sons, make these guys circumcise themselves, all the tribe, and then kill them. And he pronounces a curse. And that’s why Levi originally gets no land in the promised land. Now, that turns into a blessing for the Levites as they’re dispersed as God’s special servants. But that’s why they get no land originally because of their deceit and using the covenant sign to murder, commit genocide against the people.

So Jacob’s life continues to be difficult. He’s got a daughter who goes out there and foolishly lets herself be taken sexually by a man of the Canaanites around him. He’s got sons that take matters into their own hands and actually pervert the use of the covenant sign to declare war. He’s going to continue, of course, prior to this in chapter 37 of Genesis—Joseph, his beloved son—he thinks dead. And now we have this story.

So we’ll come back. I’ll mention briefly Shechem and Dinah again later as we go through this text, but we’re trying to deal with most of the male-female relationships, and this is a significant passage that deals with marriage and male-female relationships. You know, I got the title here: “Tamar and Judah: Sexuality and Dominion, Prototype of Christ.” I won’t really focus on that until the very end of the sermon and kind of wrap it up that way. But first by way of introduction, we have to understand that what we are in here is really kind of what we think of as the story of Joseph.

Chapter 37 has the selling of Joseph, you know, to the Midianites who take him off to Egypt. Chapter 38 has the story of Judah and Tamar. Chapter 39, which we’ll deal with next week, is the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Another male-female thing going on we’re going to talk about next week. And then the rest of Genesis, of course, is primarily concerned with Joseph. So this looks like somewhat of an intrusion of Judah into the story of Joseph, but this isn’t really the case. In Genesis 32:2, it says this is the history of Jacob, not the history of Joseph.

So this—the history of Jacob—and the two tribes that are going to be predominant in the history of Jacob are Judah and Joseph. So it’s appropriate that starting in chapter 37 with Joseph, we now see Judah. So there’s a connection that way. There are a lot of other connections between chapters 37, 38, and 39 as well. Some of them are kind of obvious, I suppose, but they are relating to the story of Jacob. We have here a story of disguise, we have a story of recognition, of unveiling—who Judah really is, what he had really done through the use of his signet and staff.

There’s some correlations which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes to Judah’s role in selling Joseph into slavery. You remember Reuben? When they want to kill Joseph, and by the way, why do they really want to kill him? They’re envious. But part of that is because of inheritance. Inheritance is a big theme because we’re talking about the story of Jacob, who’s a descendant of Abraham. And the promises—remember what the promises that come down from Abraham are: seed and land. And that’s what this chapter here is about: seed and land, inheritance and sexuality and procreation.

And chapter 37 is about that land and the brothers don’t want Joseph to inherit everything. So they want to kill him. Reuben wants to just put him in a pit and just say he’s going to leave him there, then return him to his father. So Reuben is kind of the good guy there. But Judah says, “Why don’t we sell him? We’ll sell him to the Ishmaelites, sell him into slavery.” So Judah has some big culpability in chapter 37.

And here in chapter 38, this story is placed here. Not sure of the theology of it, but it’s placed here to help us to draw those correlations to Judah being unmasked. But more than unmasked—because by the end of this tale, I believe we see Judah come to repentance for his sins. He’s that picture too of death and resurrection, the sinful man, struggling child, you know, of the kingdom, so to speak, heir of Abraham and the promises, yet falling into terrible sin, and yet coming through the other side. And God moving miraculously to reveal himself, to reveal Judah to himself in his sinfulness and bring him to repentance.

So these stories are really wrapped up together. We’ll see next week, but this relates to the next chapter because we have here Judah who sins sexually. And we have next week the story of Joseph who doesn’t sin sexually. And Judah goes out looking for a prostitute. He doesn’t go out looking, but he sees her and goes after her. And Joseph is actually, you know, attacked by a seducing woman and he flees. So there’s a real contrast given to us in that.

Another reason why I think this is placed here in between chapters 37 and 39 is to help us understand why in the providence of God Jacob’s family are going to go to Egypt. Because we have here, as we’ll see in just a moment, the story of what happens when you intermingle with the culture round about you and fall into apostasy through your friendliness with Canaanites. So, you know, to preserve the people of Israel, they really are taken into captivity for that reason. You remember when Jesus goes into captivity, it’s to spare his life, is it not, from Herod. Remember when he’s a boy, we talked about this around Christmas time. He’s attacked and he flees to Egypt for safety. Well, here the people of Israel are going to go into Egypt for safety as well.

Not from external attack, but from their own sinful tendencies to be part of the culture around them and lose their identity as a result of that. And so God will protect them by sending them into Egypt, where the Egyptians won’t even eat with those sheep herder guys. See, so God has built in a wall of partition to protect his people as they’re maturing into a nation. Okay? So see what I say? There’s tremendous themes throughout this chapter that play in both directions, looking back on the garden, looking ahead to Egypt, and then the Exodus from Egypt. It’s a tremendous, tremendously insightful chapter.

But let’s look at three particular aspects of the story. We’ll work our way through it and we’ll do that by looking at place names. I don’t know that this is, you know, this is just a useful tool to remember how this story works. And we’re told in verse one, “it came to pass at that time.” That is an indicator to us that this story begins to happen at least, or has reference to the same period of time in which Joseph is taken to Egypt.

Now, later on, Judah’s wife will die after a long period of time. So we’re not sure what’s going on with the Joseph story while the Judah story is going on. But they kind of put them together. One other thing, by the way—now that we sold Joseph into Egypt and then skip in the next chapter to the story of Judah—we’re watching a movie, you know, and you have that scene, and something very important has happened to this guy who’s going to be a central character. And now you flip to another scene in another part of the world, another part of the family life, and it builds suspense. It makes you want to see what happened to Joseph. So we get back to Joseph. Chapter 38 kind of sets us up for all that stuff.

Well, at any event, at that same time, then it says that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite woman. Okay. So he apostatizes—this apostasy of Judah, this dissension from the faith, this moving away from faithfulness to Yahweh—happens in the context of Adullam. Or Adullam actually means “retreat.” So I put on your first point there: we can talk about this first section of this story, verses 1-5, as “Apostasy at Retreat.” Apostasy at Adullam, apostasy at retreat.

And first of all, notice that this retreat to Adullam is a voluntary departure from his brothers. You see it says that Judah departed from his brothers. He does that willingly or voluntarily. That’s a contrast with the departure from his brothers that Judah has held effect for Joseph. Joseph departs from his brothers by coercion on the part of the brothers. Here we have a willful departure from the brothers, from the extended community of the Abrahamic blessing. It’s like somebody leaving the church—is the idea here.

He departs from his brothers voluntarily. David later on will come to the cave at Adullam, right? But he also is there not really voluntarily. He’s there because Saul is seeking his life. So this right away too, the reference to Adullam links us to David at the beginning of this text. At the end of this text, Tamar will have a child, Perez, and that will produce then the line of covenant succession from Abraham down to the royal king David.

So at the beginning and end of chapter 38, there are links to David. First, the place name of Adullam; later, Perez and the bloodline of David. So another big theme that’s going on here is this transition from patriarchy to monarchy, from the tribal state of Israel to the kingdom state of Israel. Okay? So it’s a link going into the rest of the scriptures that way. But what I want us to see here is that Judah departs from his brothers voluntarily.

He leaves them. Bad thing to do when you do that kind of stuff. Bad things happen. When you fall away from attending church, when you fall away from making your companions other Christians—this is the sort of story that your parents or your friends should remind you of: things that happen when you go off by yourself. Because the second thing he does is not just departing from his brothers. He makes up for that lack of communion with his brothers by a relationship, a fellowship with a Canaanite.

And the language here is pretty strong—stronger than our text indicates. He visited a certain Adullamite. “Visit” means kind of joined himself to as a neighbor or companion. So he becomes close friends, buddies. His buddy here is not a Yahweh-believing guy. It’s a Canaanite guy. And this buddy of his is going to take him down to sheep-shearing time here in a little while. They’re going to have some good old fun at the whorehouse.

Now that’s the kind of friend that Judah… Right? Praise God. Named because Leah finally loves God and gives up on her love for her husband as her first priority, sets it upon God. Judah is going to become the praise of God. Eventually, he’s going to become the princely tribe—rather, as Levi is the priestly tribe. Judah is the line by which the prince, the king, will come. Levi is the priestly line. So Judah here is the princely line. But look at the kind of guy that he is. Look at the apostasy that he falls into.

I might just say in passing here: we must be very careful in our judgments of one another. Right? We see Judah here in a very bad light, and we would say this guy is not regenerate. He’s reprobate. But that’s not true. We don’t know how the timeline goes, but when Judah, when the Joseph story with Judah is brought to completion, Judah offers himself as a substitute for the youngest child, for Benjamin. Right? He is giving of himself self-sacrificially, if need be, to keep himself imprisoned for releasing the younger brother.

You see, he comes to his senses, and in this text he comes to his senses too. The elect can fall into grievous sins as David did. We must be very careful in terms of categorizing our children or other people as not part of the elect community, the Lord Jesus Christ, because of transgressions. These are pretty big sins he’s involved with here. And I want us to see—and I want us to get this down—that remember Adullam, or Adullam, is retreat. And when you retreat, the tendency is to fall into apostasy.

The lack of communion you have with your brothers and sisters in the Lord is replaced. People are social creatures. They’re created in the image of God wanting community. And he seeks our community, but it’s bad company. Bad company corrupts good morals. And that’s what this friend so-called is going to do to him.

Third, he builds on this apostasy. It’s a big longfall because now he intermarries with the Canaanite. What does it say? Says he saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he married her and went into her. Remember what happened to Esau? He married two Canaanite gals, right? And that was bad. Abraham took great pains to secure for his son, and his son for his son, that the line of Abraham comes down outside, not marry the Canaanites.

So when we now read of Judah marrying a Canaanite woman, it should be a big red flag. This guy has really gone south. He’s really descended. He went down. The text tells us he goes down to Adullam. He goes down away from his brothers. He spirals down to seek friendship with the world. And he spirals down to intermarry now with the daughters of men, so to speak. Okay.

The godly line here that he represents is now intermarrying, as it did before the flood, with the ungodly line, just like Esau did. And it raises questions in the reader’s mind. If you remember the story of Esau, he lost his birthright, and now we see Judah going after a Canaanite wife like Esau did, and also not attending to his family the way Esau is always off running around. We see parallels here between Esau and what we see in Judah—just like Esau having complete lack of respect or concern about the covenant line and blessings.

He throws him away for a mess of pottage—through a sexual adventure in the case of his Canaanite wife, for prostitution later on. So that’s the kind of Judah has these parallels to Esau. And we wonder what’s going to happen to the covenant line of succession here. What’s going to happen to Jacob’s blessings through his children. Is Judah going to be cut off completely because of this apostasy?

That’s the sort of things we wonder.

By way of application, particularly to the young men here in the congregation: you obviously get the application, I hope. But Matthew Henry says this: “His foolish marriage with a Canaanite woman, a match made not by his father, who it should seem was not consulted, but by his new friend, Hirah.” And then he says, “Let people be admonished by this to take their good parents for their best friends and to be advised by them and not by flatterers who wheedle them to make a prey of them.”

Their children: look at this as an example of the need to stay in close relationship with the church of Jesus Christ. The need to have your buddies in the context of believing people—not just this local church, but believers should be your close friends, not unbelievers. The need in major decisions of your life, like marriage, to consult with your parents, and the need that you have been brought into covenant obligation to do in this church: not to marry a non-believer. We laugh when that phrase is read when people sign the covenant. It’s a very serious portion of the covenant because it binds the posterity of this church to marry in the context of the faith and not be like, you know, Aaron and apostate Judah was here.

Judah has a descent. This descent also is sort of summed up. This is a little more iffy, but I think the text wants us to look this way. He “saw her, took her, went into her.” That’s what it says. It says that he “saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite woman whose name Yeshua. He married her.” It doesn’t say “married her” here. It says he “took her.” It can sometimes refer to marriage, but it seems to be a rougher form of the word. He “took her and went into her.”

Do you see the sort of guy Judah is portrayed for us as? He grabs her, goes into her. See, that’s the kind of guy he is because he’s descended from faithfulness to the covenant. He is portrayed as the bad guy. He’s the bad guy here. Okay? There’s a good person here, but it isn’t Judah. Judah apostatizes. He falls by retreating to the place of retreat.

Now the next name that’s indicated for us—and I got this under Roman numeral II—they then have the naming of the children. She conceives very rapidly: has Er, Onan, and then Shelah. And then it tells us at the end of verse 5: “He was at Chezib when she bore him.” We’re not sure who “he” was. Could be Shelah, could be Judah. Some manuscripts have “she was there at Chezib.”

But the thing it gives the place name at the end of these sons, and I’m going to use that place name to help us remember what these sons are like. The word Chezib comes from a word meaning “deception,” and its root seems to be the kind of dry wadi that they would have in the land of Israel—that was a river sometimes and sometimes it wasn’t. Couldn’t tell when it rained a lot, you’d have these rivers. Then they disappear. So the place name brings to mind the idea of deception and it brings to mind the idea of a dry river—supposed to be a river, but it’s all dried up.

Jeremiah talks about a deceitful river. That’s what this place name means here—is that it’s a deceitful river. And what we see, thinking of the descendants of Judah as the stream of children, producing a river of descendants—that’s what descendants comes from, right?—is that idea. Well, we see that Judah’s sons involve a dry wadi and deceit. The dry wadi is Er. Er “did wickedly.” And in the Hebrew, the word wicked is a play on the word his name.

His name is supposed to remind us of the wickedness that he did. Now we don’t know what it was, but it seems like—because God kills Onan for sexual sin after this—that sin maybe was sexual as well. So the whole text here, the whole chapter, you just cannot get away from the subject of sexuality. Er, he doesn’t give her any children. Okay? He’s a dry branch, as the scriptures talks of. Eunuchs says. So she gets no children. Judah gets no children out of him.

The second son, Onan, is a deceptive person. Now, he pretends to do the job of the levirate. He pretends to go into his wife, but then he spills the seed on the ground. He’s deceptive. You see? Now, why is he deceptive? We don’t know what Er’s deal was, and we know pretty much what Onan’s all about. He doesn’t want children. Or rather, he always wants the descendants to be Er’s name as opposed to his name.

He’s going to lose inheritance. Remember, just like the wicked brothers, or sons rather, of Jacob didn’t want to lose inheritance to Joseph—so Onan here doesn’t want to lose his inheritance to his dead brother. Okay? He’s covetous for land, and he’s deceptive in terms of his actions. He goes into her, and the text says repeatedly, lots of times, but every time he violates marriage by not raising up seed for God.

Now, just one side comment: this is not a text to be used to say that all birth control is illegitimate or sinful. What’s sinful in Onan’s case is not the specific practice he used. That’s not what’s singled out. What’s singled out as the reason he dies is because of his failure to raise up children for Er and in terms of the progression of the covenant line. Okay. But in any event, he proves to be a deceiver.

But then the third deceiver isn’t really Shelah. We don’t know what he’s like. But after Onan dies because of his sin—cut off quickly—then the third son, Judah says, “Well, you know, maybe you ought to go home and just hang out as a widow for a while, cuz she’s kind of young.” And we may say, “Well, maybe Judah’s telling the truth there.” But the text tells us in verse 11: Judah says to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, “Remain a widow in your father’s house till my son Shelah is grown. For he said, ‘Lest he also die like his brothers.’”

See, Judah is deceiving Tamar. He didn’t plan from the beginning to give her Shelah, his other son. Later on, this is explicitly laid out, because, you know, Tamar realizes she’s never going to get Shelah. He’s all grown up. Later on, long time has passed. He’s grown up. She doesn’t receive him as a husband. So Judah is a deceiver here as well in terms of this place name that means deceiver or dry wadi.

So we see Judah and his sons reflecting the place name of a deceitful river at which the naming of these children is attached to in terms of the text. So Judah is a deceiver. Judah is superstitious also. You know, he lost Er when I got married to her. Maybe there’s something wrong with her. See, that’s really superstition—to kind of go away from something not because of knowing a morality or a moral issue or a truth or a principle of God’s word is at play, but rather just to sort of say, “Well, two in a row, you know? Third time’s the charm. Better not do it.”

He’s a superstitious guy. When we fall away from the faith, we don’t leave religion. We replace it with some other kind of religion. We replace it with superstition or lucky stuff, that kind of thing. And that’s the way Judah had become.

Judah also is like the Jews will be later. He is hypocritical and he has moral blindness here. See, his sons have done wickedly and been killed—twice—and he doesn’t get it. He can’t see it. He thinks there’s something wrong with the wife. Now, there’s no indication of any difficulty on her part or sin on her part. But Judah, this is what happens: young people, and us older ones, when you fall away from the faith and you leave Christian companions, when you marry with the world, or at least have hang out with the world, have friends with the world, you lose moral discernment.

And Judah had lost moral discernment to know what the problem was. He should have known it was his kids. He had no moral discernment. And he was hypocritical. You know, we’ll see that later on. But here he’s being hypocritical and blaming her for his son’s sins. We’ll see this in spades toward the end of the text when he wants her to be burned for harlotry, even though he had gone out and solicited a prostitute.

I say he’s kind of like the Jews here. Some people think that’s where the word “Jew” comes from—is Judah. Judah means “praise Yahweh.” And so Judah is shortened to Jew. And it’s funny that in John 8:41, Jesus is dialoguing with the Pharisees, with some of the Jews, and they say—he says, “You’re doing the deeds of your father.” He’s referring to the serpent. And they say, “We’re not born of fornication. We’re born of God. We’re not, you know, those results of illicit affairs. We’re good, solid people.” Yeah, you know, mom and dad were married. “We’re not children of fornication.”

Well, they are. The entire tribe of Judah are the results of fornication. They’re results of Judah going into Tamar, finally, as a prostitute. And that’s where the three great tribes of Judah come from—as the lineage and genealogies portray for us. See, see how self-righteous people can become. It’s like a Christian who becomes a Christian and thinks nobody else who’s not good. You know, people who aren’t good enough shouldn’t be looked upon as Christians, or people are so bad they couldn’t be Christians.

We get so self-righteous, forgetting the mercy and grace of God that produces the generation of his covenant seed.

So Judah is deceptive.

Third place name, and then finally, the third place name rather: now the scene moves again. We leave Chezib behind—these scenes of these sons failing as either a dry wadi or a deceptive river or deception in the case of Judah. And then in verse 12 it says, “In the process of time the daughter of Shua, Judah’s wife, died.”

“In the process of time” seems to mean a long period of time later. And that’s why we don’t exactly know when these events happened. We won’t get into all that. But long time passes. Shelah should have been given to Tamar and is his wife dies. He’s comforted and went up to the sheep shearers at Timnah. He and his friend Hirah, showing him a good time at the sheep-shearing festival. And it was told Tamar, saying, “Look, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear the sheep.”

So she goes up there and disguises herself. So the third scene is related to the place where she goes. The text tells us that she took off her widow’s garments, covered herself with a veil. Look how faithful she’s being as a widow, by the way. She dresses in widow’s garments for a long time, covers herself with a veil, and wrapped herself and sat in an open place which is on the way to Timnah.

And actually the text there reads a particular place name, and the name of the place that she goes to on the way to Timnah is called Enaim. And the word Enaim means “twin wells.” Okay, you may look it up, and some Bibles will say it means “eyes,” a set of eyes, but the other form of it that’s given later on in the book of Joshua definitely means “twin wells.” So this place name here that she goes to, set down on the road to Timnah, where Judah comes along—the place name means twin wells.

So we’ve had this descent at retreat, or Adullam, his apostasy there. We’ve had these three sons like the dad—my three sons—and the father reflected in them being a dry river and deceitful and so far no children as a result of all of that. And now we move to this place name of twin wells, and this covers the rest of the chapter, verses 12-30. At these twin wells, twins are going to be conceived. At twin wells, that’s how the story ends their birth.

So the question is: which portion will Judah engage in? Portion, tender, means “portion.” So now Judah is down at the sheep-shearing festival. He goes by. He’s going on his way to find a prostitute. Which portion will he end up with? Will he have Canaanite revelry as his portion. That’s where he’s going. Sheep-shearing time—good old time, drinking a lot of liquor and wine and stuff, you know, good old time. Then you visit the prostitutes, whatever’s going on. Canaanite revelry seems to be where he’s going to.

And then on the way, from his perspective, that’s just what he does. He enters into prostitution. He enters into hiring the services of what he thinks is a prostitute. And what I want us to see here is that we have a degree of—let’s see—we have a progression from Genesis 2 to where we’re at now in terms of human sexuality and in terms of the ungodly nature of man. Sexuality is moving downward. Okay? Remember Lamech? He was a picture of devolution of human sexuality. He married two wives. Remember? Polygamy, which wasn’t good. It was a declension.

Remember that. Esau—same thing. Marries two wives and their two Canaanite wives at that. Now, we didn’t cover it, but as that declension goes on, this is where I mentioned Shechem and Dinah. We then have a girl who lies with the man, and it’s not forcible rape. It doesn’t appear to be. It looks like seduction. So we now have seduction of women outside of wedlock, but at least they want to get married. Shechem wants to get married, you see.

And now in chapter 38, the wickedness of men continues to grow and it ends up with prostitution. Now, the man hiring the services of a prostitute. And I think this same pattern goes on in chapter 39 because in chapter 39, now we got a woman of all things out there trying to seduce a man. You see how it’s downward? It kind of follows that pattern of Romans 1, including—if we were to pay attention, we didn’t spend time on—homosexuality at Sodom and Gomorrah, but that could have been thrown in as well on the other side of the issue.

But male-female relationships here play an important role in this progression of the story. And in terms of sin, man cycles down in his sin sexually. Okay? And so we have Judah going into seeking a portion that is a Canaanite portion, entering into prostitution, hiring the services of a prostitute, showing us the devolution of sexuality for the apostate man, for fallen man. Okay?

Or will his portion be Abraham’s seed? We don’t know. We don’t know at this part of the story. What we do know is we’ve already gotten worried about this guy marrying those Canaanite gals like Esau did. We’re worried he’s going to be cut off by God. Two of his sons have already been killed. Apparently, at least one explicitly with reference to sexual sin, failure to raise a seed up for God. And the other one seems like maybe the same thing. And now we’ve got Judah entering into prostitution at this place.

It’s kind of a different love story, is it not? We’ve talked about, you know, this progression of women and men meeting at wells, and here we are again, and it’s actually a twin well. And what we have here is a shift from seeing the declension of Judah, which reaches its peak almost at the scene of prostitution, and now we have a shift to Tamar and her becoming the main focal point of this story.

Now it’s interesting that Tamar at this well scene—now hear me out here. There are things there that seem to draw us to Rebecca. Remember Rebecca? What was her distinguishing characteristic at the well? Was hospitality, but it was service and energy. Remember, she was like Abraham. When Abraham, when God comes to visit Abraham, he’s running all over the place to get things ready. And Abraham sends his servant to get the wife for Isaac, and Rebecca’s out there and she’s running all over the place to get things ready.

Tamar has gone from being a totally passive character to now hearing that her father-in-law is coming to Timnah. She sweeps into action with a whole series of verbs here. She puts the veil on, wraps herself up, runs down to the road. She’s that active person at another well. You see, now you say, “Well, this is Tamar. This is a wicked person. Don’t go, you know, please don’t sully the memory of Rebecca by bringing Tamar into the equation.”

But the scriptures tell us something a little bit different. The scriptures tell us in Ruth 4:11 and 12: “All the people who were at the gate and the elders”—this is, you know, Ruth and Boaz about ready to get married—”All the people who were at the gate and the elders said, ‘We are witnesses. The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built the house of Israel, and may you prosper in Ephrata and be famous in Bethlehem. May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring which the Lord will give you from this young woman.’”

Ruth provides us—Tamar, the book of Ruth—as an exemplar of which Ruth is hoped to be like Tamar and her children like Perez. Remember when we talked about the genealogy of Christ in Matthew chapter 1: the four women, three named, one unnamed. And three of those women appear to be Canaanites, including Tamar. And she’s mentioned in Matthew chapter 1—the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob. Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar.”

She’s listed here because she’s given to us as an exemplar of a woman who cleaves after the God of Judah. She wants to be connected to his line. She’s supposed to be seen, I think, like Abimelech at the end of his conversion. He wants covenant with Isaac. He knows that God is blessing Isaac, and he wants relationship with him. Tamar has been brought into relationship with Judah. Now on Judah’s side, it’s sinful. He’s down there hanging out with Canaanite women. He gets a Canaanite wife for his sons.

But from her side, she wants to be part of that. When she’s dismissed, Canaanites weren’t faithful like that, wearing that widow’s garb all that long period of time. Canaanite wife—why would she want to go and humble herself, go through the horrific, wrenching deception of going down and being considered as a prostitute? Why would she go through that? Because I think she wanted to be part of the godly line of God’s people. She wanted connection like Abimelech wanted connection, like Ruth wanted connection.

I think we can see in her actions the words of Ruth. Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, your God, my God.” You know, Naomi is kind of like Judah in a sense. She’s saying, “No, go back to your Canaanite gods.” And Ruth says, “No, I want to go with you.”

Judah saying, “Oh, I’ll go back to your father’s house.” She’s saying, “No, I’m not going to forget this. I want to be part of the covenant line and the seed, the promises of Abraham. That’s what I believe in now.” She’s like Ruth. It’s interesting, too, that Naomi, remember, she had a young son that she couldn’t give to Ruth. Remember that in the story of Ruth? “I got a son who’s too young for you to marry. What can I do for you?” Judah had a son to marry—too young for Tamar to marry. So I think Tamar is given to us as an exemplar, a model, and she conceives at the twin wells.

And in this conception, brings forth in the sovereign providence of God. Nobody’s giving her as an example to be followed in her actions, but in her faith, in her desire to cleave to the covenant promises of Abraham and to Judah and his family as apostate as they were, still the bearers of the covenant seed. She is an example to us. She is another woman, and like Rebecca, like Rachel, she’s going to—she is struggling with the death of barrenness. Now it’s not because she’s not fertile. She conceives right away, first time here with Judah. But it’s because of that evil, and it’s because of that deceptive Onan that she is not.

That’s the reason for her barrenness. But she is barren like these other godly women at the well. She springs into action. As I said, she, as well, can be seen in terms of her deceit, can be seen in terms of being the sort of deceit by which a woman deals with a tyrant. Judah has played the tyrant with her. He has oppressed her. He has not provided that third son to raise up seed.

And how do you deal with the tyrant? Well, the scriptures say that Satan deceived the woman, and women then deceive the serpent and crush his head. And Tamar enters into deception. Here we have this big picture coming forth in the opening chapters of Genesis of the battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And that battle frequently, when it involves women, involves deception—the way it did with Rebecca, the way it would do with Leah, the way it would do later with Rahab, another prostitute, an actual prostitute—we don’t even know she dressed up like a prostitute.

All we know is that she concealed herself and went to the road. Doesn’t say she dressed up like a prostitute. He took her for that. But maybe that’s his glasses at work instead of her disguise. She was seeking seed from the man she was supposed to seek it from—Judah. Maybe she thought Shelah would be with him. We don’t know.

But we know that she’s portrayed here as an exemplar to us and is later recorded in the genealogy of Christ and in the blessings of the book of Ruth upon Ruth.

Now, another important part of this characteristic: before we leave Judah, having brought in this secondary character of Tamar, before we leave Judah, look at what he does here. Verse 15. “When Judah saw her, he thought she was a harlot because she had covered her face. Then he turned to her by the way and said, ‘Please let me come into you,’ for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.”

See, see the impetuousness? Again, walking to Timnah. Did she keep singing? “Oh, prostitute, can I come in?” You see, that’s what he’s portrayed. Like Timothy did with his wife earlier, he’s portrayed here really as at the bottom of a long series of apostasies from the faith. And look at what he’s willing to do. His eyes begin the problem. He sees and desires. His heart moves into action. And he will give away his identity here in a minute.

“What will you give me that you may come into me?” And he says, “I’ll give… I’ll send a young goat from the flock.” “What will you give me as a pledge to you as a signet?” And he said, “What pledge shall I give you?” And she said, “Your signet and cord and your staff that’s in your hand”—your gold master card, your platinum Visa card, and more. Your social security card. That’s what I want. I want those ambassador plates off your vehicle.

His signet was a cylindrical seal, probably hung on a cord around his neck. Probably not certainly not a ring—maybe a cylindrical seal—that was identifying him, his position, his power, his authority. It was his deal, his passport, if you will. And his staff had a particular engraving on it that would identify him. It’s a picture of his rule. The staff is the staff of rule. The signet is the signal of authority and power.

You see, now I hope I’m not being too allegorical. I won’t say this is an interpretation, but an application of the text. It strikes me that we can see in this turning over of the authority of the princely tribe of Judah, of the covenant people, the Jews, to the Canaanite Tamar, signet and staff of authority—