Tamar and Judah

The family of Judah is a complicated one. While Judah was faithful and blessed with a wife and children, their sons were not so faithful. When Er was old enough, he was given Tamar as a wife. However, he was wicked in God’s sight and died before having a child. The same happened to Er’s Brother Onan when he was meant to redeem his brother. With one child left, Judah was unwilling to lose a child a third time. But in his unwillingness, he would be tricked into becoming the father of Tamar’s children.

In our prior reading we saw how Joseph was the favorite son of Israel, and how this favoritism, and Joseph’s own pride and arrogance, had caused hatred to grow in the hearts of his brothers. Tired of hearing about his dreams and visions of grandeur for himself, and bitter because their father cared so much for Joseph, the brothers conspired against him – first intending to kill him, but then selling him into slavery to a travelling band that carried Joseph off to Egypt. But any thought that their troubles would go away with Joseph was naïve. And in today’s reading we’ll hear the story of one of those brothers, Judah