Genesis 38

Chapter 38 features another story fit to teach in a children's Sunday school class, complete with smiting, deceit, and one of the earliest records of the withdrawal method. I feel like there should be a moral to this story, but I admit that I don't quite see it.

Let's start off with the smiting. Judah's first son, Er, gets a holy lightning bolt called down upon him because he was "wicked in the LORD's sight" (verse 7). Why was he wicked? Er…I don't know. I do think it's rather ominous that we don't get any details about Er's actions. Then, Judah tells Er's brother Onan (the Arbarian) to sleep with Er's widow Tamar to "fulfill [his] duty to her" (verse 8). He dutifully obeys…but then proceeds to use the world's most unreliable method of contraception. Fortunately, it happens to work. Unfortunately, God kills him for it.

Why? Did God want Onan to follow through? Was this more about him trying to get the pleasure out of the interaction without fulfilling what his father asked of him? If I had to guess, I'd say Onan's intent brought the lightning bolt upon his sorry head by thinking selfishly. If Tamar's child couldn't be his, he thought, then he wasn't going to help her.

Tamar takes matters into her own hands; in a bit of dramatic irony, she brazenly decides to take up the word's oldest profession and have a son through her father-in-law, Judah. The veil she wore really must have worked wonders, for Judah doesn't have an inkling who she is. Could he really not recognize her voice? Maybe she was a really good actor. Most of the time, I can tell who an actor is even if they use extensive makeup, but a there have been one or two times I've been amazed at how different an actor appeared just by changing his or her voice and facial mien.

Tamar proves herself as admirably shrewd, making fools out of the men around her. Judah rather dopily gives up his seal, cord, and staff in order to sleep with Tamar--he might as well have given her his driver's license. So of course, she uses those to keep herself from being barbecued when Judah accuses her of prostitution. To his credit, Judah realizes his buffoonery, saying, "She is more righteous than I" (verse 26). Well, Tamar shouldn't have used deceit in the first place, but at least she doesn't bring down one of those lightning bolts that have been raining down liberally throughout this chapter. In fact, both Judah and Tamar survive to see their twin boys born.

No one in this chapter is blameless, but God smote some people and not others. I won't venture to say what kinds of sins engender a God-ordained death; Christ's death and resurrection have since changed this whole equation anyway. I know I've been selfish and sometimes mendacious, but I still shouldn't think that, just because I haven't been hit by a cement mixer yet, these qualities are still acceptable. Sure, God forgives me when I ask Him to, but if I'm really living for Him, His power within me should render sinning unattractive. As you'd expect, I still have a ways to go.