Wednesday Bible Study: T is for Tamar (all three of 'em)

This one has been a little harder for me to get a handle on than most, for a lot of reasons.  For one, we are dealing with three different ladies in a couple of similar- but not so similar- situations.  Another reason is the fact that if I just stuck to Tamar #1, there are SO many interesting places to go.  She is one of the only four women (with Ruth, Rahab, and 'the wife of Uriah the Hittite') who get mentioned in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus.  Hers are the only set of twins (Jacob made it, but not Esau) where both children are mentioned.  And the significance of the three tokens she asked from Judah?  Yes, a lot of story- and I'll give you thumbnails of those.  But God called me to draw the other two Tamars into the mix- and that led me to do a lot of, "What is the common factor' debating- and what I discovered really threw me.

But instead of getting way ahead of myself, let me explain in short who these three are.

Tamar #1 was a woman, presumably Canaanite, that Judah picked to be the wife of his son.  But in a story I promise to flesh out, God killed him, and then killed the next brother when HE had to marry her 'for his brother', and then she was supposed to marry the youngest as well.  But Judah thought she was a jinx and him-hawed over it, claiming the youngest was 'too young'.  She knew he was trying to give her the bum's rush, though and tricked Judah into sleeping with her- and thus the twins.


Tamar #2 was similar enough that "The name was not often used in traditional Jewish societies, possibly because both Biblical characters bearing the name are depicted as involved in controversial sexual affairs." (per Wiki).  This one was David's daughter by wife #2, full sister to #3 son Absalom and half-sister to #1 son Amnon.  But Amnon was a lech, and drove himself nuts knowing that he couldn't have her because she was a virgin.  So his cousin gives him a plan of how to get alone with her, and he rapes her.  Absalom kills him in return, and the wheels really start falling off David's reign as king.

Tamar #3 is the DAUGHTER of Absalom, and all we directly know about her was that, like her Dad, she was a person of great physical beauty.


Now you've been introduced; let me loop back to Tamar #1.


I believe that the four women who were mentioned in the genealogy were mentioned because they were the means of SAVING the intended line of the Messiah when men were about to blow it.  Rahab had saved the spies sent to Jericho, because she feared the Lord and sought salvation; as a reward, she became the wife of Salmon, David's great-great grandpa.  Ruth, despite being a foreigner, pledged herself to Naomi and to God; as a result, she was married to Salmon's son Boaz, and their son was Obed, his was Jesse, and his was David.  Bathsheba, like Ruth and Tamar, had been married before; unlike the others, she was still married when she had the affair with David; and yet, she became the mother of the child prophesied when David was told by God he could not build the Temple.

How does Tamar fit in there?  Well, the Line of the Messiah was always to go through Judah (though none would know that quite yet), but Judah's eldest, Er, was wicked, and God killed him, before his evil could penetrate the line.  Onan was next, but he "spilled his seed on the ground", because any child he had with Tamar would get preferential treatment over not only any other of his children but himself as well, since a son would be considered Er's son; and God killed him as well.  Judah must have sensed that son #3 wasn't going to be any better, so he sent Tamar back to her father, and 'he would call her when the boy was of age'.  Well, considering Bar-Mitzvah is at 12, it didn't take long to figure out that Tamar was going to have to do something drastic or bear the shame of a childless widow.  So after Judah's own wife passed, he went up with a buddy to a "sheep shearing festival" (this is going to be a repeating pattern), and was POSSIBLY in the bag when he spied a "cult prostitute" along the road (Tamar in a veil for a disguise), and propositioned her.  When time came to pay, he 'didn't have his wallet' but promised her a kid goat next week.  In pledge, she asked for:  His staff (symbolic of the power of God he should have been leaning on), his belt cord (symbolic of the belt of truth, the Word of a God he wasn't paying attention to), and his signet ring (in effect his identity).  When he returned with the goat, she was gone, and he was like, "We can't make a big deal looking for her, or I'll be a laughing stock".

Three months later, he found out that Tamar had somehow gotten pregnant and was going to invoke the law and have her burned to death, as she was "promised" to son # 3.  But when asked who got her in the family way, she could have exposed the idiot's stupidity; instead, she just pulled out the three tokens and said, "It was the man that gave me these."  That gave Judah the chance to confess and own up; "Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again. (Gen 38).

So she basically became a wife to Judah that he didn't use; and she had twin boys.  One stuck his hand out first, and the midwife put a red cord on it to mark him as first born- but the hand pulled back in, and the other came out.  The firstborn w/o the cord was named Perez, and through him went the kingly line of Judah; the other was named Zerah, and he would become royal as well- at the end of the age of kings, the direct line of Perez was cursed.  But the lines intertwined with the post-exile governor Zerubbabel, and the line continued.  If not for her twins, the sins of Judah's sons would have ended the line right from the start.


Tamar # 2 is a shorter story, which I have told most of.  When Amnon set everything up, he begged and pestered David to send her to comfort him with some food, as 'he was sick'.  Against better judgment, David commanded her to go.  David could be talked into anything by his sons; and she knew it.  Thus, when the attack came...


11 But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” 12 She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate[a] me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing. 13 As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” 14 But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her.


Get that?  Even though marrying a half-sibling would be a no-no, she KNEW Amnon could have talked David into it.  So David found out, got mad, and did nothing.  But Absalom plotted.  After bringing Tamar to live in his house-  And her brother Absalom said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister. He is your brother; do not take this to heart.” So Tamar lived, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom's house- and then played the old, 'let my brothers go sheep shearing with me' trick on David, had Amnon killed by his flunkies and ran away.

And David did nothing.

So I am guessing that Tamar #2 shortly died of her despair, because not long after, it is mentioned that Absalom had a daughter that he named Tamar.  Like I said, we know nothing of this Tamar from the Bible except her beauty.  BUT, the Rabbis add that she married Rehoboam, son of Solomon.  Who's that?  Why that's the next king, who given advice by his elders to lighten the tax burden of his father and the people would love him, or the advice of his buddies to make it even worse so they would obey him, he chose the second- and broke Israel forever.  Did she have a hand in this?  I don't know.  But what did the others have in common?


Failed Fathers.  Sexual excuses.

Judah later recovered his honors by repentance; but he had watched his father play Truth Or Consequences with women since he was a child; his crimes were watched by his three sons, who became even more evil.  So evil, God would not have them in the line of the Messiah, so He killed them and 'started over' with Judah himself.  His sexual excuse?  Oh, my wife has died, I am lonely; oh, I'm out with the boys, all lit up, what's the difference; It's only a roadside whore, who cares?

David gave his sons whatever they wanted.  Even when Absalom turned the kingdom against him, he could only grieve his death- so much that he made his own army wonder why they bothered.  His daughters, though, were another thing entirely.  Oh, whatever my boy wants; oh, how about that pretty thing waving at me from the bath on her roof?

So what made the difference between the big two?  Somehow, someway, #1 acted righteously to the Lord; she did not submit her rights, but must have submitted to His will, because, after all, she got her name in the Genealogy, where the one who committed adultery (Bathsheba) just got a mention as another man's wife.

#2?  Well, she was at least in word willing to submit to evil to stay from harm;  She knew she could only trust her father to take his sons' side, and apparently hadn't been taught by that father to trust in God.  And she dies alone, desolate, in her brother's house.

And see, this is what troubles me.  I understand that each man stands on his own sins, not his father's.  But if the standard for fatherhood is Solomon's "Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it", then the Lion from which the Messiah would spring, the Man after God's own heart, and the wisest man the world had ever seen, all failed miserably at being a father.

And the women?  #1, "According to Legends of the Jews, Tamar was endowed with a prophetic gift which allowed her to know the future of her descendants. From this gift, she knew that she would be the ancestress of royal line of David and mighty prophets."  I don't buy that, but I do believe she was put into the situation by God for the purpose of His Will- a will that Judah's sinfulness would have shot down.

#2? There is just not that much to go on.  But consider this:  Where #1 became part of a blessing of God (the promise of the Messiah), all #2 became was the starting point of the curse God gave David for his sin with Uriah.  And really and truly, I am left still debating, not only over what we don't know about these women, but how the most dreadful of fathers- Judah, David, Solomon, even Lot- go on to be named righteous in God's eyes.  But one day I will, and when I do, I'll comprehend a bit more of what God sees in me...