We pick up in chapter 38 with Judah leaving home. Chapter 37 ended with Joseph getting sold into slavery. At the end of chapter 37, we saw the Midianites (who were a part of an Ishmaelite caravan) sell Joseph to Potiphar, after buying him from his brothers. Now in chapter 38 we see Judah leaving town. Remember, Judah was the mastermind behind the scheme to sell Joseph (Genesis 37:26-27). This happened right after Reuben convinced Joseph's brothers not to kill him, but to leave Joseph in the cistern. Reuben's plan inspired Judah. Judah said, "What will we gain by killing our brother? His blood would just give us a guilty conscience. Instead of hurting him, let's sell him to those Ishmaelite traders..."
My personal feeling is that Judah left so soon because he began feeling the guilt of his actions and just like Southwest Airlines, he wanted to get away. He seems to realize that it is not right to kill Joseph when he says, "...After all, he is our brother—our own flesh and blood!" later in verse 27. He saw a chance to ease the guilt on his conscience. Judah's actions seem to show a realization of their sin and his own guilt.
So, in chapter 38 we have Judah moving to a place called Adullam with a man named Hirah. The writer does not tell us how they know each other. He does make it a point to mention that he marries a Canaanite woman. Later on in the OT, God makes a big deal about things like this to the Israelites. The idea of marrying women not of God's chosen people; and the practice of the second child born gaining the father's inheritance (which ceases in the NT) is sin according to God. In the 1599 Geneva Study Bible, it refers to these acts by Judah as heinous, but that is for a later study. The reason I even brought this up is that I have tried to emphasize Joseph's character so far. No matter what his environment, he stayed true to God. What I am seeing here is we all are in the midst of people that we love, whether in our own family or someone else that we may care for. Caring for them does not mean we follow their lead on all issues in our lives. We choose to follow God's righteous path if we will it to happen, like Joseph did.
In chapter 38, we also find his older brother Judah not only breaking his word, but sleeping with what he thought was a prostitute. That is the kind of role model we see in Joseph's life. He could have easily made the same kind of choices or absorbed a similar mindset. He didn't. He filtered through the muck and stayed faithful. Not once do we see Joseph's actions as anything but righteous. The writer placed the story of Judah and Tamar right in between Joseph getting sold and his time as a slave. Why? I think that reason is to do what I've tried to do so far in this devotion series, and that is put the spotlight on Joseph.
Think about it: Judah is one of the dominant brothers so you would think he would be more mature spiritually, but he is not. In this story, we see him engaging in a marriage condemned by God earlier, and now not being righteous in his dealings with Tamar. I do not have time to go on a tangent about Judah's sons, but I will say as far as Judah is concerned, he did not adhere to the right way of handling Tamar. The thing about this situation, without going into too much detail, is to understand the tradition at the time. What I am talking about is a 'Levirate Marriage' (jewishencyclopedia.com) or the obligation to marry your brother's widow. Simply put, one brother would be required to produce an heir for his deceased brother. Er (eldest son of Judah) was so wicked that that God killed him. Then we see Onan (middle son of Judah) refusing to have a child with Tamar in obedience with this levirate marriage law to produce an heir for his brother Er, so God killed him too. Judah, for fear of his last heir Shelah (youngest son of Judah), tried to ignore her but she would not just go away. He even tried to push Tamar under the rug by having her go to live with her family.
Judah was a trip. This dude made selfish choices at almost all times it seems and even though he paid for them with the death of his own children and his Canaanite wife, he never lined up with God's will. I see us doing the same thing in today's time. We either blame God for our problems (if we believe in him) or we make emotional decisions based on selfish intention, and wonder why we suffer. Not only does Judah suffer, he even goes deeper. Sexual purity meant nothing to him. Judah goes on what in today's terms would be a business trip to Timnah and while there, like many men of today, took the opportunity to have sex with a prostitute. Little did he know that when he gave her his identification cord and seal (like a modern day credit card receipt for services rendered) in Genesis 38:18, it would come back to bite him later. Tamar used this to not only save herself from being burned as punishment for prostituting, but to also prove herself more righteous than Judah.
Although what she did was not really righteous in Judah's eyes, again we see him feeling guilt for acting on his own selfishness. We see a few important things here. One is people have been acting on revenge for centuries, no matter how small or big the scale. I also want to point out how human these guys were. They were not all walking on perfect holiness. They did not all try to make the right choice all of the time. The last thing to highlight before moving on to chapter 39 is how God can use anyone at anytime. Judah's bloodline ends up being the line of our Messiah. This is one of those seemingly complicated Bible themes, but once you break it down, it becomes easy to understand. In one sense we see the writer demonstrating that we can choose what is right, no matter the circumstance. Whether we have good examples or not, if we listen and obey a righteous father we can obtain high character and be used for greater work by the one true living God, Jehovah.
On the other hand you see God being able to use a people with a foundation not in reputation to offer salvation to us all eventually. What a God we serve, amen? History had to happen in a particular way in order for time to work things out the way it did. The contrast between Judah and Joseph proves that God is sovereign once again. It proves that he is right. All we have to do is choose to believe in Him and His ways all of our days. If you have been choosing to compromise yourself sexually, or being selfish with your time and resources, what is stopping you from being more like Joseph and less like Judah? Nothing is, but your own heart.
