The story of Tamar is an unsavory tale of rejection, deception and evil. It sounds as though she could well have been abused by her first husband, an "evil man". When he died, due to Levirite laws, she had no choice but be married to her brother in law. He did not treat her well either. He seemed more than willing to sleep with her,whether or not she wanted to, but "spilled his seed" so she would not become pregnant. This left her in a position of shame without hope of having a child. According to the text God killed him for his evil. Understandably, at this point, Judah was leary of allowing his third and final son to marry this woman who, as far as he could tell, had caused the death of his other sons. He sends her back to her parents, instead. This is unthinkable. Now she has no options, no one to look after her and no hope of husband or children - her future is hopeless. So she takes it upon herself to force her father-in-law to right this wrong. After her mother-in-law dies, she dresses as a prostitute when her father in law is coming to town. He does not recognize her and "hires" her. When she becomes pregnant he is appalled - Now he is concerned with his family's appearance in society. Even though he obviously has slept with at least one woman outside of wedlock, and has bannished Tamar to a hopeless situation, he feels righteously indignent. It is only when she proves that he is the father of her children that he repents and allows her to live, though not with any status since she still was not married. At least she had her children.
This is an aweful story. A woman who was so abused and misused that she turned to questionable (at best) means to get what was rightfully hers. I have no answers for what she should have done. Throughout history there are stories of people in hopeless situations - some with triumphant endings, many not. I don't think those of us with relatively comfortable lives with lots of options can really judge their actions.
I think there are things that we can learn, though. Judah was blind to his sons' faults. Even though, as far as we know, Tamar had nothing to do with his sons' deaths, he blamed her, not them or their activities, for their being struck down. I think we all need to be aware that most stories have more than one side and that we need to realize we may not know all the relevant facts. We need to be open to discovering new facets to a story that seems somewhat straight foreward. And we need to be aware that we tend toward finding a scape goat - someone to blame when things are bad. Somehow we need to step back and see that it may not be anyone else's fault and that the story may have more sides than we can see.
It also seems no attempt was made, by Judah, his wife or sons to find out how Tamar was doing and how they could make it better. There was no real consideration of her as a real person. She was cast as Er's wife, not as a woman with wants and needs. This, too, is a trap we sometimes fall into. We think we know a person. We judge him or her by some actions we see or by his or her position in the church or community. The fact is that all of us are many faceted. We have hopes, dreams, pains and disappointments that affect our view of and reaction to any situation. Before we write anyone off we need to take the time to get to know him or her and see the good and the bad, We need to tear down the stereotype or pre-judgement and get to know, or at least glimpse, the whole person.
Our discussion centred around the hopelessness that many people, through fate or circumstance, people find themselves experiencing. Culture, finances, religion, age,and/or ill-health can all play into their situation. How do we make things better? We also talked about women's use of their sexuality. Tamar went to extremes - but how many of us use our sexuality in one way or another to get what we want or need? Or do we stifle it in order to seem more masculine and capable of handling business in "a man's world"? There were a lot of tough questions and I'm not sure we have a lot of answers. We do, however, have a kind of sad respect for Tamar who was so desperate she gave up her pride to pose as a prostitute and sleep with her father-in-law, risking her life for the chance at motherhood and at least a modicum of respect in society.
None of us is perfect. We do drastic things when we are desparate. We judge people and ignore people. Sometimes we hurt people. Sometimes we put ourselves before others. But even though both Judah and Tamar were far from perfect people, they became Jesus' ancestors. From all this deception, evil, and hopelessness comes that man that brings us all truth, love, peace and hope. I do take hope from this, that even us imperfect people can help further God's plans.
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