“Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn; her name was
Tamar” (Genesis 38:6, NRSV). That’s how her story (an
odd insertion into the Joseph narrative) begins. If it
sounds like this Canaanite woman was a piece of meat
bought at the marketplace, read on: It gets worse.
After Er dies, Tamar’s father-in-law, Judah, hands her on
to the next son, Onan, because the Levirate custom was that
he should conceive offspring for his dead brother. The
ancients thought a woman’s role in conception was simply
to receive new life. The custom was originally intended to prevent
a family’s extinction. But many, like Onan, evaded
that obligation. When Onan also
dies, Tamar, like a family heirloom,
is put on the shelf to await the
younger brother, Shelah.
The idea of Tamar being consulted
in these matters is foreign; the dark
implication is that she had a sinister
power which caused the deaths.
Duplicitous Judah has no intention
of keeping the promise to his third
son, fearing “he too would die, like
his brothers” (Genesis 38:11). We
wonder: Did Tamar feel guilty, angry,
grieving, worthless?
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 Asking for a Pledge
After Judah’s wife dies, he is on the
road to Timnah when he spots a
veiled woman he assumes to be a
temple prostitute. But the woman is Tamar. When a woman’s
identity rested solely on husband and offspring, many childless
widows became prostitutes to survive. Some scholars suggest
Tamar was there out of a desperate desire for children.
Not recognizing Tamar, Judah asks her for sex. Her
response is the first indication she has any say about her own
life. When Judah offers her a kid from his flock, she insists
on a pledge until he sends it: his seal, cord and staff.
The seal was “a highly personal object that performed the
function of the signature in modern society, a kind of extension
of the personality. Judah leaves part of himself with
Tamar when he gives her his seal,” explains Nahum M.
Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis.
Judah leaves more: twin boys. When Tamar’s pregnancy
is discovered (“as a result of whoredom,” v. 24), Judah (that
paragon of virtue) sentences her to death by burning, the
penalty of Hammurabi’s code. Dramatically, Tamar produces
Judah’s seal, cord and staff, explaining she is pregnant
by their owner. At least Judah admits, “She is more in the
right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah” (v.
26). The twins (Perez and Zerah), along with Judah and
Tamar, all appear in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.
Of course, it’s anachronistic to apply 21st-century North
American concepts of women’s equality to a more patriarchal
time and place, a culture interwoven with ancient tribalism.
We assume women are agents in their own lives; in
Tamar’s time, women were property owned and protected
by their fathers, husbands or closest male relatives.
But what we can admire is the change Jesus precipitated.
Every other boy sat in the synagogue,
heard stories of his foremothers
and said, “That’s how it is
for women. Thank God I was born
male.”
But Jesus was different. In the boy
who heard the stories of his great-great-grandmothers, there welled up
a sadness that finally exploded. His
culture was just as oppressive to
women. He took deliberate steps
toward change, steps so dramatic
that, over 2,000 years later, we have
barely begun to enact them.
Jesus broke every taboo in the
book regarding women: He learned
from them, befriended them, conversed
with them, wept with them,
touched them and never derided
them. Restoring the widow of Nain’s son to life, he spared
her the cruelty that Tamar had endured. When he engaged
in intellectual discussion with Martha or verbal sparring with
another Canaanite woman, he may have caught an echo of
the gutsy woman who demanded Judah’s seal.
Perhaps when he cured the woman bent double (Luke
13:10-17), Jesus remembered Tamar who was bent beneath
family obligations. Jesus invited the woman who had been
crippled for 18 years to stand up straight and look him in
the eye, in contrast to the posture of inferiority women too
often adopted. Healing her, Jesus redressed a wrong done to
women for centuries. Afterward, he might have whispered,
“That cure is for Tamar.”
Next: Silas
Kathy Coffey, the mother of four, has won 13 writing awards from the Catholic
Press Association. She gives retreats and workshops internationally. Her newest
books are Women of Mercy (Orbis Press) and The Art of Faith (Twenty-Third
Publications). |
