12 Comments

As a man, my impression of the Tamar story has always been that Judah was clearly on extremely thin ice, and if he hadn't managed to pick someone of exceptional virtue and courage like Tamar as a daughter-in-law (and eventually reproductive partner), Yahweh would have simply had to exterminate his line and pick someone else. And even so, Judah had just barely enough lawfulness to benefit from Tamar's virtue and learn from her criticism. I hope to name a daughter Tamar someday.

Relatedly, it's a good example of how the Israelite virtues don't all come from Abraham via patrilineal descent. Critical figures like Elijah who stand up for the rights of the unjustly dispossessed have at least as much in common with Tamar as with Judah. (And, indeed, the coups orchestrated by Elijah and Elisha were instrumental in taming the Judean monarchy by bringing it under the tutelage of Israelite religion, which is probably part of why it enjoyed relatively long dynastic stability.)

It also makes a nice contrast with the story of Dinah and Shechem, where Levi and Shim'on rather forcefully reject the incorporation of foreign information.

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Overall I think you're getting the Tamar story exactly right. One little cultural-differences detail I appreciate in the Hebrew is that when Judah sees the veiled Tamar at the crossroads, he thinks she's a "zonah" (disparaging word for a prostitute, implying someone doing something contemptible and transgressive), but when his friend the Adullamite asks around about her, he asks the locals about the "kdeshah" (feminine-sacred-one, probably used to denote practitioners of sacred prostitution), and reports back to Judah in the same language, gently implying that the local mores honor at least some forms of prostitution. Then when Judah learns of the apparently illegitimate pregnancy, "zonah" is used again.

A lot of Genesis is implicitly about navigating cultural differences around sex and property rights.

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ahhh thats interesting

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On David, one consideration that strengthens your argument is his relationships with women in the books of Samuel; he seems to like and get along best with women who conspicuously take independent action to advance their interests.

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Incidentally,

"I’m sure you know as well as I do that in a really religious social setting, a woman can get a husband for something that in the secular world barely earns you a boyfriend."

I did not know this. It makes a lot of sense, now that you've told me. But I didn't grow up in a conservative setting and had no idea this was the case.

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This is a fun esoteric post partly as someone who's not hip to much of Biblical history and also inasmuch as I recently adopted a second cat whose given name is apparently a distant transliteration of Bathsheba.

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It was a great article (and I said this as a catholic)

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A lovely dive, thank you!

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This was a nice set of stories connected by “genealogy.”

I wrote about Israelite marriage, property law, and child sacrifice in the Old Testament recently. Talk about alien.

You might be interested:

https://open.substack.com/pub/metaconcepts/p/isnt-child-sacrifice-cultural-suicide?r=4hxk8m&utm_medium=ios

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Gleaning is not strictly limited to ancient custom. On my to-watch list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gleaners_and_I

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This was great.

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A wonderful Christmas read. Really beautifully written, Opp

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