Dancing in the Grey

Have you ever done the right thing the wrong way? Or, have you ever done something wrong—even sinful, as followers of the way of Jesus would say—but for the right reasons? We sometimes find ourselves on complicated moral terrain, and when we do, perhaps we wonder how to weigh our choices. Consider the true story behind the movie Schindler's list. As a Nazi party member credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust, Oskar Schindler was nothing if not a complex personality. To save those lives, he had to lie many times. He did what many of you—what I—would consider a wrong thing for the right reasons. Yet, any of us would unlikely have him do it differently. I do not know how many of you relate to his morally tenuous conduct, but every one of us—most notably me—has been deceptive. You have shaded the truth to achieve even a noble outcome. We have all done the wrong thing for what we believed were the right reasons.

The question that arises then, as we will see developed more in the story from the Bible that I would like to share with you, is this: how does God view that deception? Is it black and white, deceivers out, unabashedly truthful people in? Does deception disqualify you or me from the story God is telling in and through our lives? Is the outcome wrong if you do the wrong thing for the right reason? As we examine Tamar's story from Genesis thirty-eight, we will attempt to answer those questions, but we will certainly see that God does not cancel His plans when His people do the wrong thing for the right reasons, even though they are wrong.

Tamar's story is tragic and complicated. Having been married twice to two brothers, both of whom die, she is left a widow at a young age. According to the Law and custom of the time, her father-in-law, Judah, is responsible for wedding her to his last remaining son, Shelah. Judah, fearing his third son Shelah would die, tells Tamar to return to her parent's home and live as a widow until Shelah is grown up. Judah's fear was real, and perhaps he thought that somehow Tamar had something to do with the death of his wicked son. Either way, as we will see shortly, he deceives his daughter-in-law. Judah essentially traps her in perpetual widowhood, refusing to do his duty as the father-in-law and ensuring she remarries and produces heirs for her late husband. Tamar does as instructed. She returns to her parent's home, waiting in the hope of a chance to marry Judah's youngest son. She was not allowed to be remarried. According to the Law and custom of the time, she was engaged to Shelah. All the while, she was also required to wear clothing that would immediately identify her as a widow to anyone looking on. What a horrible situation for anyone, but notably a woman who has lost two husbands, to be in a status of pity and misery

Several years passed, and Shelah came of age, though Tamar had not been contacted by her father-in-law all that time. Judah's wife passes away, and Judah has his period of mourning the death of his wife. After he found some sense of comfort, he decided to travel northeast to the town of Timnah to shear his sheep with his friend Hirah. Can you put yourself in Tamar's shoes? Can you imagine her frustration and desperation? What would you do? Would you deceive someone to make them do what is right? Tamar had made no move as long as Judah's wife lived, but she was well aware that she should have been married to Shelah by this time. She decided to act. Someone told her Judah's whereabouts, a slightly humorous thread in this harrowing story. She had eyes on this man. Her strategy to get her rights, you wonder? Tamar decided to deceive her father-in-law by pretending to be a harlot. In her frustration and desperation, it seems she realised that if he did not do something soon, playing the harlot would be her only other option. It is not unreasonable to think that she was also aware of Judah's vulnerability, given he had just lost his wife.

Tamar removed her garments that marked her as a widow, veiled her face and wrapped her body in the clothing of a ritual prostitute. She sat by the side of the road, knowing Judah would soon be there and waited. Sure enough, Judah comes walking by, and he notices her. The writer of Genesis is meticulous in emphasising that Judah did not know who she was and that if he had known it was his daughter-in-law, he would have never slept with her. Nonetheless, he does turn to Tamar, believing she is a prostitute, and blatantly asks for sex. Again, you must ask yourself, "are these the people God chooses?" If you have been tracking this blog series, then you are thinking like me, the Noah situation was enough; then we have Abraham pseudo-trafficking his wife… TWICE and sending his first son and her mother into the desert to die. Now the man whose line carried the seed of Jesus is buying a prostitute on the side of the road. These are the people God chooses?

Yes. Yes!

God chooses incredibly questionable, morally dubious, significantly broken people to do remarkable things and to move forward the story He is telling.

Why not you? Why not me?

If we trust even our lowest moments to Him, He can make something beautiful from them.

If we have compassion for Judah, we can acknowledge that this is an impulse act on his part. When Tamar asked him what he would give her in exchange for sex, he did not have any money or other fiduciary means of payment, so he pledged to send her a young goat from his flock. Tamar's immediate reaction is that she could not depend on what he said and had good reason not to trust him. She asks for a pledge that he will keep his promise. His signet seal, an instrument used to sign his name on clay, and his staff would suffice. He complied. Tamar had planned carefully to ensure she would get pregnant in their encounter.

After her sexual encounter with Judah, Tamar returned to her role as a spurned widow. On the other hand, Judah wanted to reclaim the property he had sent with the prostitute he met on the roadside, so he sent his friend Hirah with the young goat to exchange for his personal effects. The presumed temple prostitute was nowhere to be found. When Hirah asked the locals where she was, they told him no such woman had ever been there. When Hirah reported back to Judah, Judah did not want to become a laughingstock amongst the people by further searching for his seal and staff, so he charged it to the game, believing he had done his duty to the woman. He forgot the occasion.

About three months went by, and Tamar's pregnancy became publicly known. Judah was informed as she was still responsible to her father-in-law for her actions as a widow under Levirate law. He was also told that she was guilty of selling sex. Since she was considered to be engaged to Shelah, though Judah had purposefully denied her right to be with his son, Judah wanted her punished by a grotesque execution—burned to death. "Bring her out," he commanded, "and end her life!" How can a man who has behaved so unrighteously suddenly want righteousness to the point that he is willing to execute by fire his daughter-in-law of nearly twenty years?

The dramatic denouement comes as Tamar, who has sustained remarkable self-restraint until the very last moment, confronts Judah with the at once overwhelming and unimpeachable evidence. As the kids would say, she has screenshots of the DM's! As she is being brought out, she sends word to her father-in-law that the owner of these—the signet and the staff—got her pregnant. Judah is trapped. He could claim the staff is only similar to his own, but the seal was unique to him; it was as valuable as a driver's license or real ID today. It was as incriminating as a photograph.

Judah's public reaction is conciliatory, "she is more righteous than I am." Righteous refers to her keeping the Levirate marriage law and Tamar's deceitful but heroic effort to satisfy the obligation of bearing children for her dead husband. Judah, on the other hand, as he admitted, did not keep his own faith-practise and Law, as he withheld his youngest son. He acknowledged that his inaction had driven Tamar to deception and entrapment. Judah's confession says, "Tamar was more concerned to perpetuate my line of descendants than I was." Though neither of them could know it effectively, Tamar was more concerned with Judah's place in God's divine plan for the world than he was. It is important to note that Judah and Tamar did not start a relationship or continue a sexual one. It ended with that horrible incident.

When comparing the closing of Genesis thirty-eight, the birth of Tamar's twin boys, with the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter one, you can see that the "seed" first mentioned in Genesis chapter three, verse fifteen, came through Judah, then through the younger of Tamar's boys, Perez. Remember that name, Perez. As sordid and disreputable as the events of Genesis thirty-eight may be, they show that Judah was unconcerned with the divine plan of God and the responsibility of increasing his progeny, and it became necessary for a pagan woman to preserve his family line deceitfully.

You have to quietly ask, "what in the world is going on here?" The story is insane. You would expect the twin sons of Judah's incestuous union with his daughter-in-law to be outcasts, hidden away, or perhaps not even mentioned in the Bible. Surprisingly, the Messianic line continues through Tamar's son Perez. God did not provide a "cleaner" way to continue the line that would eventually include His only begotten Son. Perez is the ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth.

Why are these unpleasant stories included in Scripture, and why are the people involved—people who hurt others, even their own family members—granted the privilege of being included in the Messianic line? Among many things, they show us that:

God's purpose is accomplished despite humanity's unrighteousness.

Now, where and how you apply this is left to you, but allow me to press into at least a few places for thought. Perhaps you have done the wrong thing for the right reasons, and you wonder if that will disrupt God's plan for your life. Perhaps you have something unpleasant, upsetting or perverse in your past, and you wonder if God can choose someone so sordid. Wherever Tamar's story might touch your life and story, I hope you see that God does not derail His purposes, even when they involve our deceit. If you gained nothing else from this horrific story, please see that—whatever purpose God intends to accomplish through your life, you cannot frustrate it through your frailty. If the Messiah can be a product of this—Jesus, who died for the world's sins—then indeed, God still has much for you… even something remarkable.

If you would like to hear more of Tamar’s story, watch the message The Magnificent 7: The Deceiver