Genesis 38 intrigues me to no end. Such a strange placement of such a strange story keeps me guessing what Moses was thinking. What was he thinking?! The part of the story that I skimmed lightly over (the X-rated part) in my sermon is the part I want to address briefly here. The story intentionally avoids the more sordid details like motives. It assumes a great deal in the reader's knowledge, which in our case is very limited. When approaching a passage like this I always have to remind myself that they don't think like I do. When traveling in Africa I continually had to remember that they do not think like I do. When I talking with my teenagers I have to remember that they do not think like I do. Here in the Genesis 38 it is so important to know that they had an entirely different set of values. For example Tamar doesn't even know what a "career woman" is. She has no idea nor yet any possibility of wanting to do something other than being a mother and raising her children, assuming she gives birth to any.With this in mind I can see why Tamar is much more tenacious than I would be about the whole marriage thing. I would have given up after two bad ones.
The whole encounter with Judah begs explanation, yet little is given. It is not clear whether Tamar's dress is that of a prostitute other than the comment that prostitutes wore veils. Tamar's intentions are never given, whether she intended to prostitute herself or if Judah she decided to "go with it" when her father-in-law propositioned her. All we know for sure is that she was determined to bear a child in Judah's family. In her determination she ends up saving the Davidic line.
I am convinced by this story that God can redeem anyone, even someone as hardened as Judah apparently had become and even in spite of difficult circumstances, like Tamar's. I think God can pretty much handle anything.
