Tamar
Judah's daughter-in-law, the first woman Matthew names
Where Scripture records this person
- Genesis 38:6-30
- Ruth 4:12
- Matthew 1:3
Who this person is in Scripture
Tamar is married to Judah's eldest son, who dies; then to the second, who also dies; and then she is sent back to her father's house while Judah quietly withholds the third. In that culture she is left without husband, children or standing, and no one intends to fix it.
What she then does is not presented as a model, and Scripture reports it plainly: she disguises herself, Judah takes her for a prostitute, and she keeps his pledge as proof. When her pregnancy is discovered and Judah calls for her death, she produces the pledge, and he says she has been more than he. Her son Perez stands in the line to David and to Christ.
Family, as Scripture gives it
- Spouses
- Er, then Onan by levirate obligation
- Children
- Perez, Zerah
Scripture does not tell us Tamar's family, nation or age. Genesis 38 never names her father.
Promises and covenants this life carries
- The line to David runs through Perez, born of this account. Ruth 4:12 shows Bethlehem still blessing families by his name generations later.
What this teaches
- Scripture does not clean up the ancestry of the . Matthew names Tamar rather than passing over her.
- Judah's failure toward a widow is treated as the real wrong in the account, and he says so himself.
Questions the text can answer
Does Genesis approve of what Tamar did?
Genesis records it without commending the means. The only verdict the chapter gives is Judah's, in verse 26, where he declares Tamar more in the right than himself. Read the verse in your own translation. That is a comparison between two people, not a rule for behaviour.
Scripture does not tell us what Tamar about God, or what she hoped for beyond a child and a place. Anything beyond that is inference.
Read further in Scripture
- Deuteronomy 25:5-10