Why is the record of Judah and Tamar in the Bible? I can’t imagine why it would be important to the Israelites of Moses’ day, but the significance to us is not readily apparent either. Remember, Romans 15:4 says that “Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scripture, we might have hope.” What hope can we glean from this situation? Could it be from Tamar’s story? This is not the last time in Scripture that we hear the name of this obscure woman; perhaps she is the reason we have this story.
Imagine Tamar’s situation. In her culture every woman had to count on the support of a man for survival and protection – either a father, husband, or son. A woman’s worth was measured in her ability to bear children for her husband. A widowed, childless woman who had to return to her father’s home had little hope of marrying again, and so was doomed to being a burden to her father and perhaps a brother, not enjoying the ability to manage her own home, being a second class citizen or worse in her home and community. You can imagine that that was not a desirable life for a woman. Tamar was willing to wait for her younger brother-in-law to mature rather than be doomed to that situation for her lifetime. She also grew desperate enough to be used like a cult prostitute by her father-in-law in a last-ditch effort to avoid that fate. Tamar is mentioned again in Matthew 1:3, for she was an ancestor of Jesus!
Moses couldn’t have known that Tamar would be an ancestor of the Messiah. That this story is included in Genesis is to me evidence of divine inspiration of Scripture. It also demonstrates that God can bring good out of the bleakest of situations. Tamar is one of four women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus recorded in Matthew. Their stories remind us that in God’s hands, the most hopeless of life situations can be redeemed.
How did Joseph, raised as the pampered son of a wealthy man, not reject God when his brothers sold him, when he was reduced to a slave, when he was unjustly thrown into prison? He obviously turned to God in his desperate situations, and found God to be enough to comfort and sustain him. A wise man once told my daughters, “You don’t make your choice in the heat of the moment, when you are carried away by passion, but when you are in your right mind.” This story challenges each of us with the opportunity to make the choice now to follow God in whatever situation He wishes to lead us. If we don’t choose now, the pain of rejection, or disappointed hopes, or humiliation, or reduction, or injustice might cause us to turn in the wrong direction in a time of crisis. If Joseph knew God’s blessing as a slave sold by his brothers, if he knew God’s steadfast love as an inmate of a foreign prison, we can also know God’s sustaining grace in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, if we turn to Him. The time to make up our minds is now.
God gave dreams to the Egyptian cupbearer and baker for the purpose of connecting Pharaoh with Joseph! Contemplate the mysterious and myriad ways God works to perform His purpose, and the implications for your life. Can we agree that God’s ways are higher than our ways? Joseph would have missed the connection if he had not been personable enough to ask these men why they were so sad. Who asks that in a prison?
But God’s purpose for Joseph was yet two full years off. In the meantime, he was stuck in that prison he called a dungeon or pit, faithfully helping the prison guard with any of the duties that needed fulfilled in that prison, likely continuing to build relationships with the prisoners (whom he knew could be no source of help to him) and encourage them. Wow. I’d want to be like Joseph, but I despise the conditions under which that character was cultivated.