This was one of the Bible stories I never knew of till I was a young adult, because in my elementary Bible and catechism classes, the violent stories were told with all the blood and gore (i.e. Jael pounding a tent stake through the head of a sleeping soldier), but the sex-laced Bible stories were adapted to a G-rating or skipped altogether. And by the time we were old enough to know the facts of life, the religious formation classes had moved on from the Bible stories to the epistles and systematic summaries of doctrine. This story is obviously hard to tell in any form without talking about sex and semen and prostitution. But is a favorite of mine because it depends on a delay of recognition and ends with a very satisfying resolution of conflict.
Tamar and Judah, Genesis 38
Tamar is widowed before she bears any son, which is an extremely hopeless state for her to be in. Her father-in-law, Judah, honors a law of justice to women by letting Tamar try conceiving a firstborn son to continue her dead husband's line, through semen donation from her dead husband's brother. That brother is not willing to have a baby that he won't be the acknowledged father of, so he practices the pull-out method of birth control. Then he dies, so Tamar looks to be quite the Black Widow, and dad-in-law is not so sure he wants her anywhere near his only surviving son. She is sent back to her family, used goods and childless and better off dead.
I wonder if Tamar had heard the story of Grandma Leah's veil trick! Anyway she also dons a veil and puts herself out there on the road with the intent of turning a trick on her father-in-law. He does not recognize her, assumes she's a prostitute, and has sex with her and gets her pregnant. She also shows a mastery of timing as she carefully delays any recognition till pregnancy is certain. She ensures that she can prove paternity one the day when he finds out his widowed daughter-in-law is pregnant and yells "Burn that slut" with an impressive show of righteous outrage. Even in those days Jerry and Maurie would have had plenty of baby-daddy dramas to bring on their shows!
Because this story is placed as an interlude in Joseph's story, it seems that it is regarded as an necessary sub-plot for later developments in the drama of Joseph and his jealous brothers. It seems that Judah recognizes something about his hypocrisy when he is forced to publicly acknowledge the truth about Tamar's illegitimate pregnancy. He reaches a new level of maturity that he did not have during the drama of Joseph's captivity, for he takes responsibility for his actions at last, announces that Tamar came by her children quite honestly, even though she was veiled. He cares for Tamar properly after that, and he is now ready to be the first brother willing to personally offer himself up for punishment in the place of his little brother Benjamin at court in Egypt.
But that sibling rivalry is still in the bloodline. Tamar's twin sons act out a rivalrous childbirth scene that remind us of Jacob and Esau who were wrestling for elder son status already in utero. Zereh punches his hand out first and gets tagged as firstborn by the midwife, but then that hand is yanked back in (poor Tamar!) It is Perez who crowns and breaks out first. I'm sure the brothers argued all their lives about who was technically the oldest and the favorite. Maybe they died without ever knowing for sure, but we get to see that it was Perez who was chosen as a link in the royal ancestral line that will lead to King David and eventually to Jesus of Nazareth.
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