Dirty little secret (a reflection on Genesis 38)

"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, NIV

As I mentioned in my last post, currently I meet with an inmate at the Barron County Jail on a weekly basis. “Bill” has recently given his life to Jesus and has begun to read the Bible and as he does questions understandably arise. But the one he asked me the other day I don't think I have ever been asked about before:

 “You know Genesis 38? What's that all about?” 

Wow. There's a chestnut worth pondering. In fact, the whole story is rather odd, curious and, frankly, bizarre. It reads like Days of Our

Lives instead of holy writ. It's the story of Judah and how it is he came to produce an heir through a tryst with his daughter-in-law. 

So, Judah married a Canaanite woman by the name of Shua and she gave him three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah. When Er came of age, Judah arranged a marriage for him to a Canaanite woman named Tamar. But Er was a bad guy or so the narrator tells us – so bad that “God took his life” (v. 7). Now according to the custom in those days, if a brother died before producing an heir it was the responsibility of one his brothers to sleep with his sister-in-law in order to produce one for him. Judah orders Onan to fulfill his duty but Onan knows if she does conceive the child won't be his so every time they are together he...er...pulls out so that no baby will be produced. In other words, he's hiding behind accepted custom to get sexual pleasure out of his sister-in-law. For that, the narrator tells us “God was much offended by what he did and also took his life” (v. 10). 

From Judah's perspective, Tamar is unlucky – two sons dead and both were connected to her. Since Shelah is still young, he sends Tamar home to live with her family assuring her that when he is of age he will fulfill his duty to Er. In reality, he's just trying to keep Shelah from coming to the same bad end as his older brothers. 

 

Time passes, Shelah grows up but Judah makes no preparations to marry him to Tamar. She is just bad luck. Judah's wife, Shua, dies and after he has mourned her loss he goes to Timnah to shear sheep. While there, Tamar decides upon a ruse: she will disguise herself as a prostitute see if she can lure Judah into her bed. The rest is tawdry reading: 

15 Judah saw her and assumed she was a prostitute since she had veiled her face. He left the road and went over to her. He said, “Let me sleep with you.” He had no idea that she was his daughter-in-law. 

16 She said, “What will you pay me?” 

17 “I’ll send you,” he said, “a kid goat from the flock.” She said, “Not unless you give me a pledge until you send it.” 

18 “So what would you want in the way of a pledge?” She said, “Your personal seal-and-cord and the staff you carry.” He handed them over to her and slept with her. And she got pregnant. 

So, Tamar is now pregnant by her father-in-law who at this point is clueless. While he sends his payment to her later she is nowhere to be found. All he is out for the one night stand is his staff and his seal and its cord which serve has his calling card of sorts. Again, I'd rather let Scripture tell the tale: 

24 Three months or so later, Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law has been playing the whore—and now she’s a pregnant whore.” 

Judah yelled, “Get her out here. Burn her up!” 

25 As they brought her out, she sent a message to her father-in-law, “I’m pregnant by the man who owns these things. Identify them, please. Who’s the owner of the seal-and-cord and the staff?”

26 Judah saw they were his. He said, “She’s in the right; I’m in the wrong—I wouldn’t let her marry my son Shelah.” He never slept with her again. 

27-30 When her time came to give birth, it turned out that there were twins in her womb. As she was giving birth, one put his hand out; the midwife tied a red thread on his hand, saying, “This one came first.” But then he pulled it back and his brother came out. She said, “Oh! A breakout!” So she named him Perez (Breakout). Then his brother came out with the red thread on his hand. They named him Zerah (Bright). 

After we reviewed the story together I asked Bill what he thought to

It could be any
of them - or all
of them!

 wit he replied, “This is seriously messed up.” Who couldn't but agree with him? This is a story you'd expect to find in a cheap Harlequin romance not within the pages of Scripture. “So what's it mean?” 

 

Here's how I answered: 

Well, the short answer is: “I don't know.” But just as I said that two other thoughts came to mind: 

One thing about the Bible is that it is always, painfully at times, honest about the people of God – Abraham and Sarah's plan to get an heir, both Abraham and Isaac lying to Pharaoh to save their skin and then each getting caught in the act with their “sister”, Jacob deceiving his brother and his father in order to get the birthright and the blessing, Jacob's wives negotiating “stud”-rights with each other, Judah and his brothers selling their brother Joseph into slavery. And on it goes, seemingly chapter after chapter. It's awkward enough working through Genesis 38 (personally, I'm glad I wasn't having this discussion with a woman). The Bible's consensus seems to be that as a race, we are one sorry lot – sinful, selfish, conniving, manipulative, deceitful – and yet in covenant with Yahweh who often refers to himself as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. In other words, we're his people. We often do not behave as such but still we remain his. In the New Testament, Paul put it this way: “...we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7, NIV). 

So, Judah who bears a child with his daughter-in-law masquerading as a prostitute because Judah won't fulfill his lawful duty by her – yeah, that's God's people, tawdry tale though it may be. 

I then told Bill to turn to Matthew 1:3 and read it to me. 

“Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar). Perez was the father of Hezron...” (NLT) 

Ah...they skipped some parts

I'm an amateur genealogist and I've come to believe that in most families – if not in all – there are “skeletons in the closet”: family secrets that are not talked about at reunions. Stories of suicide, marital unfaithfulness, incest and the like. I know my family has a few of them. How does it make you feel that Jesus' family has a few of those as well? In fact, a few verses further and we can read about Rahab “the prostitute” and Bathsheba “the adulteress”, they too are included in the genealogy of Jesus “the Messiah”. Their names are listed without apology or explanation. They're part of the family from which Christ came. 

Rahab the prostitute was
also one of Jesus' "Greats"

What I get from that is while our lives may indeed be a mess and in sore need of sanctification if we confess Christ as Lord and Savior we are his and he is at work within us seeking to bring forth new life. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corin 4:16). And that is an encouraging word. 

Frankly, Genesis 38 is a head-scratcher to me. It seems to interrupt the flow of the Joseph story begun the chapter before. People who study these things way more than I do tell me there is way more going on in chapter 38 than Judah's “dirty family secret”. But it's good to know when we feel despondent at our lack of growth in the character of Christ, we are not disowned by him. Rather, we belong and by God's grace, in time we will behave as fitting the sons and daughters of God.

Good news comes in threes (or did you know?)

Apparently there's an old saying that “Good news comes in threes” and if that's the case I heard (at least) three good things this past week.

It may have been the coolest thing
I learned this past week

1. “Did you know that David Berkowitz – a.k.a. serial killer “Son of Sam” - is now a Christian?”

I heard this little nugget from a guy presently incarcerated at the Barron County Jail whom I have been meeting with for a couple of weeks lately via Google Meet. When I asked “Steve” what the good word was when we met the other day he told me that he had received a card with no return address. Inside the card was an unsigned short note that told Steve that this person was praying for him and they assured him that Jesus loved him and was for him. But inside that was a gospel tract of sorts that described how David Berkowitz, serving a 6-consecutive life sentence for the murders he committed, gave his life to Christ about ten years in (around 1987).

Honestly, my first response was “Whaaaat?” I hadn't heard that before. Steve is a young guy who is looking at some pretty long time depending on the outcome of his case. So I asked him, “How does that make you feel? How does it make you feel that a guy who used to terrorize the people of New York City, a guy who was locked up and then the key summarily thrown away, has found new life in a relationship with Jesus?” “It gives me hope.” “And what's more,” I added, “it should remind you that if you get prison, prison is never the last word with Jesus. Cancer is never the last word with him, either, nor is divorce or termination from your job. He is the Resurrection and the Life.” 

After our visit, I googled  David Berkowitz and found a well-written article by WORLD magazine published last year (see Finding life in a life sentence) that confirms what was in that Gospel tract that Steve had received. In 1987, a fellow inmate at Attica Correctional SuperMax encouraged him to read the Psalms. And one night while reading Psalm 34:6 - “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles” -  a nerve was hit that opened up the sluice gate of his heart. It was the beginning of something new. 

Today fellow inmates call him “pastor” and he is deeply involved in prison ministry. Even though he is entitled to a parole hearing every two years, he consistently refuses to ask for his release and often skips the hearings altogether. In 2002, he wrote to then New York Governor George Pataki, “In all honesty, I believe that I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life. I have, with God's help, long ago come to terms with my situation and I have accepted my punishment.” While different movies have been made about him according to New York State law he cannot profit off their stories. According to the article, however, he's not interested in the least of watching any of them. 

“No one can go back and fix things. You can ask for forgiveness and
do as much as you can to try to have reconciliation. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. But the Lord wants us going forward with thankful hearts, you know? I feel I have a thankful heart because God has had mercy on me. My situation could be a lot worse.” (David Berkowitz)

Reading this article I thought of Paul's words found in 2 Corinthians 5:14-20 (The Message)

“Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

“Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.”

David's story – and for that matter, Steve's – is yet another reminder of how scandalous and how powerful the grace of God really is.

2. "The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future." (The king's strange dream and some thoughts on Daniel 2)

This year my devotional reading is in Daniel and this past week I re-read the story of The King's Strange Dream (2:1-49). King Nebuchadnezzar on successive nights has a dream that unnerves him. He demands that the wise men and astrologers who are on the payroll not only interpret the dream for him but describe to him exactly what he saw. “Impossible!” (they say) “No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men” (v. 11). The king reacts to their reply like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland screaming “Off with their heads! Off with their heads!” 

When Daniel finds out what the commotion is all about he asks for twenty-four hours to pray. At the same time, he tells his friends to do the same and together they ask God to reveal the dream to Daniel. He does and the next morning he is escorted to the throne room to not only to describe the dream to the king but also to tell him what it means giving all credit to Yahweh: “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (v. 27).

Those of us who are familiar with the story know what happens next: he not only describes to a “t” just what the king dreamed in the night but also exactly what it means. At the end of it this powerful, arrogant king steps off his throne and falls on his face before Daniel the Judean slave! “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries...” (v. 47). 

How many sermons have been preached on who's who and what's what as to which empires do the specific parts of the statue represent? How many theological tomes have been written

Nebuchadnezzar gets his
comeuppance

connecting the king's dream to many of the particulars of the images found in Revelation? Depending on your point of view your “timeline” will differ significantly from others. But that is not the main point of Daniel 2 (i.e., delineating prophetic history). No! It's really more simple than that. It has more to do with the old childhood game of “My dad is stronger than your dad” - or in Daniel's case, “My God can whoop all your Babylonian gods together with one hand tied behind his back”. 

Tremper Longman III puts it this way:

On a surface reading, the core issue of the story seems tightly focused on the meaning of the dream. Once Daniel describes and interprets the dream, we learn that it concerns the future rise and fall of kingdoms. What could be more fascinating to a modern reader than a divine glimpse at the future? Thus, many readers fix their rapt attention on the dream and its interpretation.

However...the core concern was not the content of the dream or even its interpretation but on Daniel's God-given ability to interpret the dream. This is not to claim that the message of the dream is unimportant, but certainly the focus is on the context between the Babylonian wise men and Daniel. Where the “magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers” of Babylon failed, Daniel succeeded. Why? The text is structured to highlight the answer to this question, and in his prayer, Daniel articulates it well (2:23):

I thank and praise you, O God of my fathers:

You have given me wisdom and power,

you have made known to me what we asked of you,

you have made known to us the dream of the king.

Only God's wisdom, according to Daniel 2, can reveal the mysteries of life. Human wisdom falls short. (The NIV Application Commentary on Daniel, p. 84)

What is so encouraging to me is that we meet Daniel and his friends as young Judean exiles impressed into service for the Empire at the beginning of chapter 1. By the end of Daniel 2, however, Yahweh has promoted the friends to key administrative roles in the kingdom and Daniel has become the king's right-hand man. King Nebuchadnezzar may be still sitting ensconced on his throne but he's just been given a lesson in humility. The story begs us to ask the question Who's really in charge? 

3. "Son, when all you can see is your pain you lose sight of me" or Hearing God's whisper in The Shack

My class has resumed again at the Barron County Jail and this time it's based on the 2017 movie The Shack. I know some of my friends may have issues with the movie and the book on which it was based but I'm willing to risk some theological tip-toeing in order to wrestle with questions that have plagued humankind FOR.EVER. Questions like Where is God when it hurts?, If God is who he says he is why does he allow such terrible things to occur? And If God loves me why does it feel at times that I am all alone? 

I hadn't seen the movie since 2018 so last night I sat down to watch it so that it was fresh in my mind for today's class. I've been struggling with some inequities in my life of late, some things that have occurred to me in the last six months in which I feel on the receiving end of injustice. My marriage is good and our children are doing well. We enjoy good health and financially we are in a relatively sound place. But a series of events occurred last fall that have caused me to question God's goodness. I expect challenges but this feels more like being trampled on. 

Love always leaves a mark

When you are trying to recover from a wound like that watching The Shack can feel like someone just ripped the stitches out causing it to seep and bleed anew. If you're familiar with the movie you know the main character – Mack – is reeling because his youngest daughter, Missy, is abducted and murdered by a serial killer. As he accuses Papa [i.e., God] “Where were you when I needed you? Where were you when Missy needed you?” Papa, played wonderfully by Octavia Spencer, replies “Son, when all you can see is your pain you lose sight of me.”

While sitting on my couch in our front room watching the movie, I couldn't withhold the tears that flowed freely as I listened to the voice of God spoken in Octavia Spencer's dialect. “Honey, there's no easy answer that will take your pain away. Believe me, if I had one, I'd use it now. I have no magic wand to wave over you and make it all better. Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.” It is the age-old reminder to all of us who journey the road of faith that when we don't understand what he is doing (think Abraham and Sarah, childless as senior citizens or Joseph rotting away in an Egyptian prison forgotten and alone) can we still believe that he is good? And that he loves us and is working through all things despite the evidence to the contrary? 

Being with the guys this morning was more than instructive. It was therapeutic as we reflected together on the mysteries and inequities of life and the truth that the Bible presents to us that he loves us and is with us always. I don't know about them but I needed to hear that today.